[Savannah-dev] Re: Eric comments on new savannah

[Mathieu Roy]

Hi,

[savannah-dev added in Cc]

At this current state, only bugs will be handled, however it is
interesting to fill a list of features requests.

Yves PERRIN <address@hidden> a tapoté :

> 1] page: System information
>    It can be dangerous to display so much system information to NON 
>    logged-in users

Changed.


> 2] it would be nice (actually Eric would like to work this way) to display 
>    item data in chronological order instead of reverse order.
>    In other words Eric would like to see first the original submission, 
>    then the follow-up comments in chronolgical order and finally the input 
>    box to enter a new comment.
>    It might be nice to have this as an option that users can set in their 
>    personal settings

Feature Request.


> 3] while browsing an item for which there is a cc mail address list, there 
>    is a dustbin icon next to every address so that they can be deleted. 
>    However, cliking on the bin submit the form that one might not have 
>    finished to complete so this is disturbing.
>    The best would be that submission of the form is only done vis submit 
>    buttons and selection of option such as deleting something is flagged 
>    by a checkbox

Normally there should be a confirmation question via a popup, but it
is a javascript thing. This is not awful, as it is very basic
javascript, so it should be portable (I think that I already got that
work with links...).

In fact, these actions does not really submit forms and are usually
not really supposed to be submitting a form, as it is only deletion of
extra information.

Also, in several places of Savannah this method of deletion is used,
it would be maybe even more confusing to have several ways in Savannah
to delete things. 

I think that the kind of issue we should we should remind about and
collect user feedback in the long run.


> 4] The task submission form display a calendar icon with an empty link for 
>    now

This is broken javascript, that should be replaced soon or later by some
simplier-but-actually-working select boxes.


> 5] There is a 'News' link in the public menu
>    If one submits a news item it is acknowlodged with the message:
>       News Posted: it will need to be approved by a project administrator 
>       before it shows on the project front page
>    However there is no News link in the administrator menu so how can the 
>    administrator approve a news item?
>    There is a site news approval link in the left pane but this probably 
>    apply to request for news to appear on the savannah homepage

This is something we need to make clear when presenting the new
savannah version:

Project administration, dedicated to project admins, means
administrating/configuring project tools and members. 

No link in the "Administration" menu points to a page where you
administrate items like bug reports or news posted.

The news manager just have to go to the usual news page, and select
"Manage news posted" (or something like that, I cannot remember the
exact wording).

Apart from that the sentence "approved by a project administrator
before" was buggy (news manager! not project administrator) and has
been changed since.


> 6] I should write for me (or it should be dispalyed as a comment)
>what is our treatment of non logged-in user submission with no email
>address mentionned
>
> 7] To submit an alternative url for a service such as CVS, if we type the 
>    url of our cvs browsing homepage it does not work (whether we enter it 
>    as cvs or view cvs)

Top menu seems fine, but the box on the project home seems to be
buggy.
Will be fixed.


> 8] In the Administration - Mailing lists / Add a mailing List
>    there is no input box to enter the mailing list name (just an '@' 
>    character is displayed)
>    What is the purpose of the description input (a name to be associated 
>    with the list?

Misconfiguration issue: I did not spend time to configure mailing-list
related information on the demo system.

> 9] It would EXTREMELY nice to have the possiblity (one way or an other) to 
>    specify browsing filters with conditions and their negated counterpart
>    (the most typical example being items not 'closed' which in certain 
>    cases mean 'open' but in others could have many other values 
>    'accepted', 'ready for test', etc)

You didn't not try "Browse with [...] and multiple selection", did
you? :))

I'm sorry but I cannot think of something more clear than "multiple
selection".

Negating an option, it like selected every others option.

Apart from that, note that if you have different option for the status
field than open and closed, you have a major failure in your database
:))
(an item _must_ be open or closed)


> 10] 'Public download area' with active links appears in the Public / Main 
>     page while download area is shown as disactivated in the 
>     Admin/Main/Active Features page

Confirmed, will be fixed.


> 11] When submitting / modyfying an item and entering a cc specification, 
>     it would be nice to have a search/select box with the registered 
>     users. Of course one may wish to send a copy to a non registered 
>     person in which case one should type this person email address

I'm a bit concerned about the idea of adding one more search box in
this already complex page.


> 12] When reassigning an item to an other project it is not obvious how one 
>     should specify the new project (type its name / its group_id) or even 
>     better have a select box

You did not tried, did you? :)
Basically, group_id are almost never presented, so I would not take
that as a first guess.

In fact, you will be presented a list of groups (with checkboxes)
found depending on the word you typed.


> 13] In the user profile page, when entering a message in the 'Send a 
>     message to Administrator'  to WHICH ADMINISTRATOR does it apply
>     (after discussing with mathieu it appears to be in the request
>     for membership to a project so it concerns the 'project'
>     administrator ... although obvious/intuitive and explained
>     somewhere in that page it might be worth saying 'Project Admin'

I assume that you talk of "my group" page, when you request inclusion
in a group.

It is written clearly in the 3 lines text just on top, yes it's
project admin.

However, this has been reworded.


> 14] How to setup watching members (I did not remember and may be it is not 
>     obvious to users?)

Check the memberlist of a project.

As it is only possible to watch members from a project you are member
of, I think it is the right place.

> 15] It would be nice that the link behind 'Contact us' is not the Savannah 
>     Administration homepage but the corresponding 'submit support' page 

This is site specific content.

> 16] Comment on the portal homepage layout: the unbalance in term of length 
>     between the right column and the other two could be reduced if we 
>     would not display the 10 most recent for every project category but 
>     less (5? or whatever)

It depends on how many group type you have, on how many news you have.

If the hardcoded value need to be changed, it should no longer be
hardcoded value.

> 17] the list of hosted projects gets split in several pages if too long 
>     but the length of the page is at present much bigger than the window 
>     size which means that one has anyway to scroll and since he/she must 
>     scroll then why not having the whole list at once?

Hum, at Savannah we have more than 1000 projects, I'm not sure my web
browser would like this full list.

However, we do print more than 5 results because the point is not to
demonstrate how our "previous result / next result" works nicely :))

Note that you can choose the number of result to print per page. 

> 18] In the project search form does type means category? if yes the let's 
>     call it category and if not what is it?
>     Is the search done on the project title, on its description, on
>     both?  (it should be explained as a comment)

Hum... this is simply "type of group" from Group Type... Since we are
in context of a search on group, mentioning "Group" in the column
group type seems redundant (we do not print either "group
description").

Also, there is no such thing as category for groups/project in
Savannah.

Finally, I do not think that we should detail how we proceed to
provide result. It would result on 3 lines of text, and God knows that
more text you write and less people read. We have a good example of
that in your point 13. :))

Don't take me wrong, I clearly understand why people usually do not
read these texts, because we are (or have been) all often confronted
to software with plenty of useless message, especially with
some proprietary OS.

But considering that situation, adding more text when it is not needed
to use the tool is not something I would do. 

> 19] While having submitted support requests, none appears on the personal 
>     page

Only opened request are showned.



Thanks to Eric for his time,



Regards,

-- 
Mathieu Roy

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