Slashdot Mirror
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.
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)!
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
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
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!!!
For open source projects its offered as freeware. You need to send an email to opensource@deskzilla.com with your name, project's name & URL, and Bugzilla URL of the project for a freebie key.Then you may proceed to download the proggie.
For everyone else, it's purely commercial. All your $99 are belong to them!
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!
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.
That would increase my productivity 10-fold.
I take it you're at work right now?
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.
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!"
recursion (n.) See recursion
"Live free or don't."
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.
Lets build a slashdot desktop client. Then I can /. offline.
willie
Hello, If you're interested in an alternative bug tracking tool that is open source, you should check out TrackIt. Not only does it manage bugs, but it also supports features, requirements, test cases, and much more, in addition to any user defined item types. It integrates with Subversion and CVS, as well as preliminary integration with Eclipse. Other features include a Timeline view that is also viewable via RSS, a Listing driven by HQL, Reports driven by SQL, fully customizable lookup lists, project news, a high level summary view, nightly build integration, and user customizable RSS feeds.
Under the hood, it's implemented using Hibernate 3 and the fully AJAX enabled Java web toolkit, Echo2
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.