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Discussing core features for v0.1 / #5495

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Dear Axelle,
Hello,

sorry for not replying to your mail. I am really busy for more than a month now and I am looking forward to July to finish the most urgent projects and probably do some vacation. If you could sent me the changes, I will review and add them to the distribution.

Gantt charts

I really thought a lot about gantt charts recently. Although I cannot explain my hesitation precisely, I somehow feel that gantt charts are not what I would like to support in streber. I learned the hard way, that implementing a feature is much easier than keeping it free of errors during the future development. In this way, streber is a personal project for which I have not enough resources of managing features I do not need urgently. I did this once with mysqli-support and it turned out to be the worst mistake in streber's development (beside choosing php as programming language). So if you really need gantt charts, maybe parallel development would be a good idea. I am perfectly aware of that forking is a very hard decision but I just do not have enough energy to implement AND organize a complete project management system. Esp. if I do not see the personal benefits of its features. My core wishes for the next versions are following:
  1. Clean up Back end. Rewrite database abstraction layer, drop mysqli support, provide flexible filters and an API for extensions.
  2. Clean up the integration of ajax functions.
  3. Further tune the interface for managing tickets, documentation and efforts.
  4. Implement very basic functions for handling invoices.

Learning for the past

I am really hesitant with new features until the back end gets more stable. In some areas the system already got too complex. Instead of implementing new features I am thinking about making radical changes to the system:

Probably replace/extend folders with tags

Folders are excellent for documentation and small projects, but they soon get overly complex and clutter the actual work tasks. Learning from Trak might be a good thing here.

Reduce the right system

The user right systems is way too complex. This is not only a problem to maintain but also to learn. I am thinking about reducing the pub levels to "Published", "Normal" and "Private". To differenciate weather items are writable or not is not necessary if anything can be redone. (I already hear the screams).

I know that this text will probably not help to increase streber's look as a serious business application. I am really sorry for that. I wish I would have the resources to put more energy into the project. Well, sometimes open source has its drawbacks.

  yours sincerely
  pixtur

15 Comments

webbplatsen

Jun 5, 2007
well well...
Gantt charts is not really a show stopper so let it be for now.
"Busy" ...that's our word. I know the feeling but hey man you can not code 24/7 even if you want to.

great work with Streber so for anyhow!!!

krisp

Jun 6, 2007
Reply to well well...
Hello webbplatsen,

When we can expect your theme for v >= 0.08?

webbplatsen

Jun 7, 2007
Reply to Reply to well well...
Reason why I halted the theme where just because there where a lot new html/css all the time and no html/css documentation. Pretty hard to diff every release. No hard feelings cause who document css/html as first choice.
When html/css is a little bit more "stable" I will probably update WebbPlatsen theme.

damian2

Jun 6, 2007
i agree too
I agree with your core wishes, specially with the first. A medium for extend in functions without overload the core development.

Thanks Pixtur! Great work!

axelle

Jun 6, 2007
version 2
about new features
Hi Pixtur, i agree with the fact that gantt charts are not a core issue. They are not part of the current changes i have done on streber.

This is what i have done:
  • i added an effort menu, so that the logged user can immediately have a look at its own efforts.
  • i added a dropdown list to the page of creation of efforts. Now, when you create an effort you also specify the category of effort you have done (discussion, work, test).
  • it is now possible to display efforts grouped by category, but i am still working on the graph visualization.
I joined pictures of what it looks like.
Let me know if these changes can be interesting for the whole community or not, since i first did it because of our needs.

Sincerely,
Axelle

xl

Jun 8, 2007
version 4
Thank you for the music!
Thanks for pointing out your ideas. Here my 5 cent:

Reduce the right system

Great! I agree. We surely need read protexction but in a wiki i dont need write protection.

Gantt charts

I agree here too: that's not the priority at the moment.

Replace/extend folders with tags

Yes, tags are important (take this as volunteering)! Backlinks would give us what we need to have tags.
I already thought a while about folders myself, and this is too long for a connent, so see Melting folders away.

guest

Jun 10, 2007
Better listing and time "effort" management
I'd prefer if tasks in the list (be it milestone or any list) were sorted in priority order (bug, overdue etc.).

Also a user should see the date when tasks is scheduled for completion and replace maybe too complex "efforting" to Comment/Update feature where the user could set "Time spent so far:".

guest

Jun 18, 2007
Future
I have been following the development of streber for a while, and after leaving i came back to adopt it as my personal project manager.

I understand the lack of time and all, but i really though of this as a tool taht would never stop and become greater things, i hope someone "buys" the ideia and keeps it alive even if you can't dedicate yourself to it anymore.

And.. (beside choosing php as programming language) .. damn this line almost made me decide to get away from streber again... what are you gonna use? java? asp? ... maybe stup a hosting for these languages.. that would really get a lot of people using streber ...
... really, php is a logical answer and a trully capable one.

well.. good luck.

guest

Jun 28, 2007
Printing
Two things I miss the most are:
  • printing (like a list of tasks or companies)
  • better search
Both are very related to the activities of our sales team. What they need to do is search for the tasks/companies by location (street or area or city) and then print out the results, so that they could use it on the road.

guest

Jul 31, 2007
Right System
"Published", "Normal" and "Private" could be the basis for a prof. system. But everytime we uses streber, we wish to become more flexible in the right systems concerning our customer rights. There must be a development not ab back step! Streber was the only system well working system we know actually, which is able to build up complex projektmanagement or customer management including customer rights.

guest

Jul 31, 2007
View comment
Hi Axelle!
I am very interested in these changes:
This is what i have done:
  • i added an effort menu, so that the logged user can immediately have a look at its own efforts.
  • i added a dropdown list to the page of creation of efforts. Now, when you create an effort you also specify the category of effort you have done (discussion, work, test).
  • it is now possible to display efforts grouped by category, but i am still working on the graph visualization.
i was thinking of a some extensions like that but didn't have time to implement them.
The possibility to but efforts into categories is a great feature.
if you read this pleas mail me to t[dot]stanzel[at]bgcc[dot]at
kind regards tobi

guest

Sep 22, 2007
Database Abstraction Layer
Hello!

I am very interested in this project! In your article you write that you are going to rewrite your database abstraction layer. From personal experience I know that this can be a lot of work. What do you think about Doctrine? (www.phpdoctrine.net) It is a pretty nice ORM based on PDO closing version 1.0. It still has got some bugs and flaws, but the documentation got a large overhaul lately and working with it is pretty nice and quick!

I personally am working with symfony/Doctrine on various projects. Why do you think that choosing PHP as programming language was one of your worst choices for Streber?

Regards
Bernhard

guest

Oct 29, 2007
View comment
Rewriting the Database Abstraction Layer or use an existing like doctrine would be a good idea. Here are the stats of my home screen (1year and 2 months with 5 users)

streber 0.08 (2007-05-15) / Erstellt in 4787 ms / Speicher gebraucht: 2.383.464 B / (5627 DB-Anfragen / 38598 Felder)

guest

Nov 7, 2007
Front page with overdue tasks
If I had one request, it would be a home page which does display

1/ project
2/ milestones with dates, overdue days, days left etc...
3/ Main person for the project
4/ prioriry

The actual home page is full of info but in my case all important ones are not here. Or If I can get someone let me know how to modify it as it may not be suitable for all.
Other than that great soft, I truly find it useful
Cheers
E

guest

Jan 15, 2008
hi Pixture
nice to hear about your planning.

I am using it since 6 month, and I have group of 15 people. The main problem I feel with it is viewing task list. When you have lot of tasks (bugs, task), it's very tough to see all with scroll down and up. A filtration option to see only required e.g. list only of particular person, filter related milestone etc would be nice.
 
 

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