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Bugzilla Delivered to the Desktop
sereda writes "Deskzilla released their desktop client for the Bugzilla bug tracking system today. The Deskzilla system promises to deliver features for greater productivity and improved working environment for the users of Bugzilla." There are also a few screenshots posted on their site.
The installation crashed. Better report that. ...wait a second...
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
I, for one, welcome our improved bug squashing overlords!
Task tray icon #147!
(Not as bad as my parents who have half their screen taken up by all the spyware crap running in the Tray).
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
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Now here's a head scratcher. I'd presume that the Bugzilla team uses Bugzilla to track its own bugs. Now, what happens when there's a bug that renders certain features of Bugzilla unusable? The team wouldn't able to use Bugzilla to track the bug that is causing the Bugzilla software to be buggy. What happens then?
Task tray icon #147!
...
Well, if you have WinXP and try to run games on a wireless laptop, it can sometimes take up to ten minutes to close out all the task tray icons they clutter it with, shut off all processes, and finally run the game.
Which will then promptly crash and then you have to bring back up all the wireless services so you can - finally - report the bug to bugzilla on the desktop task tray icon
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Free or not, Bugzilla doesn't come close to the commercial bug tracking apps. Give me Tracker or Clear Quest any day. Freeware has come a long way, but practical and reliable bug tracking apps seem far away.
Has anyone used Bugzilla so far?
I thought we were moving away from fat client technology. So let me get this straight:
We went from decentralized, to centralized back to decentralized...... now back?
...it was a Java client that used Apache Axis and the GForge SOAP API to make a GUI client. I made a little jEdit plugin and a little JFreeChart app that showed user and project charts.
I wasn't really using the GUI client very much, though, so I ran out of interest. But if something like that was available that could talk to the SourceForge servers, I'd buy it...
The Army reading list
The network is the computer! That's what Google said this week, so it must be true.
sulli
RTFJ.
This seems backward to me. We seem to be moving towards a more internet focused life, with web based apps which are scaring MS. We're trying to do things that used to be desktop based (encyclopedias, games) on the internet (Wikipedia, flash games & MMORPGS) And then we're taking something that really should be online to the desktop?
Task tray icon #147!
Yeah, that's life for packrats. And aren't we all like this? I mean, do I really need 4 web browsers? Yes, dang it, I do. What if AOL decides to hate Safari, Opera, and IE? Wouldn't I be glad I grabbed Firefox? What if they all die? Now I can report the bugs, thank you very much.
If all 4 of my browsers get screwed up at the same time, I freaking quit the Internet forever. The hackers will have won.
They want $99 bucks for this?!?
If bugzilla actually was a nice looking, easy to use application this probably wouldn't be necessary. Web-based is the way to go. Updating is as simple as updating once on the server -- you don't have to worry about a whole ton of client versions floating around.
Bugzilla is still one of those first-generation looking web apps that was designed (in the visual sense) by programmers, and you can tell. From my experience, most programmers are very bad at making user interfaces (myself included) and really it's a job that should be left to web designers (a subset of graphic designers). Compare bugzilla's interface to say, gmail, and you can see there is just no comparison.
Sure, the usability may be there, but if it's just awkward to use and hard on the eyes, people won't like it. Oh, and apparently they'll revert to developing old client/server style interfaces for it.
Speak before you think
This looks like it would be somewhat useful as it allows you to work on bugs while offline (I think), then just synch up with bugzilla once online again. Bugzilla via webserver only isn't so useful when you're not permanently online etc.
Dunno if I want to pay $99 for it though.
Ok, so how is this thing licensed? Open source? Freeware? Commercial?
Note that Deskzilla, unlike Bugzilla, is not open-source.
Call them 'smart clients' or 'fat clients' or whatever, but AJAX or not these babies are starting to make a comeback. The proliferation of web services and simple, secure client stacks to talk to them in whatever language one happens to use (C#, VB, Python, Perl, Ruby) simply make a far better solution than spankfangled 'rich' browser apps that are, for all their coolness, still difficult hacks. The desktop is still the best environment for creating useable apps. Give me a fast, stable widget library over crappy slow spaghetti JavaScript any day.
I've been involved in a number of large projects at work that involve the use of several staff members and the creation of large, complex financial analysis models and literally thousands of pages of text. Could a program like Deskzilla (or full-blown Bugzilla) offer me and my colleagues some basic project management tools? It would be pretty cool if it could generate some sort of report that we could show to clients if they want a status report of our progress. Any thoughts on this? I've managed very well without such software, but anything to make better use of my time would help. I've no desire to get a commercial package like MS Project...I would like to keep things open and lean. Any thoughts on this?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Anyone here ever use bugxula what are the advantages of that over deskzilla.
Even though that Deskzilla is a cooler piece of software.
PS Are thier other pieces of software that are like deskzill but are freeee.
Anyone got torrents available, since the server is down already?
Glen
Track your fuel economy
We've been evaluating a few request/bug/issue tracking products.
The first thing I tell the vendors is that I'm not interested in client side software. I want it to be fully usable from most modern web browsers on most common OSs. This makes it accessible by any of our users without the need to install additional software on their computer (and we don't have to worry about updating it when a new version is released).
Bugzilla is already a web application. I can't fathom why would anybody waste so much time making a client version that most sane administrators wouldn't want?
... Just too bad it isn't an Eclipse plug-in. That would have been slick.
- shadowmatter
Honestly, Bugzilla's web interface is awful. Sure, it does what it's supposed to, but that doesn't negate the fact that it's confusing and intimidating to many users. Personally, I could see a desktop front end being great for an in-house help desk. The backend's already there and solid, this just provides (what appears to be) a friendlier interface.
For ease of use and offline usage
Personally I like the appearance of this application and I think it would be _MUCH_ easier to use than the actual web interface - and the offline usage ability is a wonderful feature
It's nice that they offer free copies to members of established OSS projects
if they get $99/copy for this i should write one for trac!
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Scarab is a fork or reimplementation of Bugzilla. Kind of like a Bugzilla next generation.
Any chance that Deskzilla will work with Scarab? Are the Scarab folks working on the necessary back end hooks?
Scarab: http://scarab.tigris.org/
The administrator doesn't have to do *anything* for it. As long as it's normal old bugzilla, then deskzilla will communicate with it via HTTP just like a webbrowser would.
This is something that the client can use if the client wants to; it adds extra functionality, and is only for users who want what it gives. It doesn't stop anyone from using the traditional web-based approach - indeed, if you want to use flags, you've still got to use the web.
--LWM
web interfaces are slow and usually crappily designed. some are crappier than others. using a native binary frontend to bug tracking software is much nicer.
Don't they track bugs for mozilla firefox too? What's the difference between a web interface through a browser they're tracking that had bugs and a desktop program...that has bugs?
Several comments in this thread point out that web-based interfaces are mandatory for a bug tracking system, which is absolutely true. If you *require* a client to use the system, well, there go half of your potential users.
:)
But that's not the point here. It looks like this product just connects to an existing Bugzilla database, so you get to keep all of the web based access you crave, but your frequent users can augment that with a rich client interface.
If you work with bugzilla all the time, there are features that a web interface just can't give you. The biggest one: being able to work with Bugzilla offline (bug database behind a firewall, for instance). The ability to do bug triage from a coffee shop instead of the office could easily justify the price tag.
Of course, it has to acutally install and run first.
It's called harmonic motion.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
That would increase my productivity 10-fold.
I take it you're at work right now?
I dont agree.
By your logic I guess you are against pop email clients as well. I like having my email on my harddrive, all those GB's of mail in a fast, quick access rather than having to download them. I see benefits in web interfaces, but having a choice is nice.
Also, if you try this bugzilla client (I have) you'll quickly notice some really nice features that ease the use of bugzilla, I find it more simple, intuitive, and easy to use. I especially like it's tree structure.
As someone who's used quite a few web-based and client-based bug trackers over the years, I'll say that Bugzilla's web interface leaves a *LOT* to be desired: you are seriously limited in the complexity of queries you can write, your sorting options are laughable, general result layout is very poor, etc etc.
So I was prety excited when I saw this post - I downloaded the product and immediately tried it out. Unfortunately this product doesn't really add much: sorting is unimproved, the query builder is a little (not much) better, the layout and UI is unattractive and not signifcantly more powerful than the Web UI -- plus the product is pretty slow overall and consumes a frightening amount of system resources (150M memory, 300M VM space, according to TaskMan)
Overall, if this were a free product, I might use it: however for $99/seat it just isn't worth it right now.
MyEclipse (an Eclipse plugin) already has Bugzilla integration, and only costs $30/year (whereas Deskzilla costs $99). I haven't used the Bugzilla integration much to say how good it is (J2EE app server support in MyEclipse is great, though). And I'm not really sure if they just repackaged this plugin that was already mentioned.
Bugzilla is already a web application. I can't fathom why would anybody waste so much time making a client version that most sane administrators wouldn't want?
For same reasons why people prefer to use desktop apps for email instead of web-based. Better UI, work better, can work offline.
yes.
Lets see, first came the client/server applications and all was well! Well, not exactly first, but for the purpose of this discussion I'll say client/server came first. Companies grew faster than tech services could scale-out servers and management shouted "Oh no! This monolithic application will not scale!"
Then came the browser with all the promises of client side scripting and the developers shouted "I can do anything in a browser using sweet javascript code that you old client/server developers can do in a thick client! It will scale to tens of thousands!!"
2 years go by as developers embed thousands of lines of sweet javascript code to accomplish what you can do in a thick client in maybe 100 lines (I'm exaggerating here).
Management shouts "Oh no, my thin web application is taking 10 seconds to load as it parses 50K lines of sweet (now a spaghetti mess) javascript code!"
The new age of developer shouts "I can accomplish everything your antiquated web application can do, using XML web services while still providing a thin client with increased functionality in half the development time! Not to mention the application will be self updating so you will never need to support older versions of the application!"
And managment shouts "WTF!"
I agree Bugzilla's default web interface sucks big time. But if you look at what various projects that use Bugzilla have done to it, it can be made to look really slick. Look at KDE's http://bugs.kde.org/> or even Ubuntu's http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/> versions for example. I just wish the default installation were slicker than it is. The underlying technology is excellent.
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
I particularily find bugzilla's web interface bad for searching for existing bugs.
Usually I get so frustrated with the bugzilla interface that I just give up on reporting the bug at all.
recursion (n.) See recursion
"Live free or don't."
A lot of the data mining and reporting tools I want on the client are already available in Excel. Can Bugzilla be accessed from Excel?
Since our admins set up a couple of convenient SQL Views on our DevTrack database, I've been able to very easily access our issue/bug tracking system via Query Analyzer and Excel. Excel is awesome as I can quickly look at how things are going with things like pivot tables, or just formating the data in a way that is useful to me and the team. I can then forward the spreadsheet to somebody else and it will either work with cached local copy of the data (in the worksheet), or will update itself via ODBC. Why reinvent the wheel?
The offline bit is really great - if you need to go to a client, and want to take the buglist along with you, you're pretty screwed. But if you have this, there's a local copy you carry around, and it seamlessly integrates...very nice. Very very nice.
... and very very scary if there is any sensitive customer data in your bugzilla.
Not everybody has 24/7 web access, especially when not on the move. Maybe a developer wants to fix minor bugs on his laptop on a long-haul flight with no web access, and needs access to the bug lists?
Plenty of uses where an offline bug database would be more useful or required.
Lets build a slashdot desktop client. Then I can /. offline.
willie
1. ignore posted bugs.
2. expire posted bugs without reviewing (for example mozilla.org does this) Personally I would never post any bug report to mozilla.org after receiveing this automatically generated offensive message on my detailed bug report with test case.
This way they will lose all serious reporters. After posting first bug people would lose any interest communicating with their stupid robot.
Remember, almost everything posted to bugzilla.mozilla.org would be never reviewed by anyone. Posting to bugzilla.mozilla.org is just a waste of time.
------- Additional Comments From gerv@mozilla.org 2005-09-27 01:46 PDT -------
This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".
This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.
While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.
If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.
The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/relea
Seamonkey: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/
This software is not a free software and not even open source. And it is a java app.
I'm waiting for the QT4/KDE client...
Don't forget then Bugzilla can be hacked to meet your needs. If you want to change something you can. If you need a new hook, you can add it. Some of these aren't even that difficult to do :-D If you want e-mail automatically sent to a special e-mail address when bugs get closed, no problem - you can do that. If you want to make your source control add comments to the bug report every time a junior developer touches the code, you can do that, too.
Try doing *that* with closed source bug tracker!
--LWM
The bleeding edge version seems to be unavailable for the moment. Also, if you want a free copy for being an FOSS developer, they limit you in the EULA for Open Source Projects to only one project. Now, I haven't checked to see if it was possible to use it with more than one, but they do not allow it in the license.
http://www.basecamphq.com/
--Robert