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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.
They use an older, stable version of Bugzilla to track issues in newer releases. Just like gcc folks use the current version of gcc to compile the next one. No magic here.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
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!
... 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.
Go read Reflections on Trusting Trust and pay particular attention to the part about the '\v' character.
'Course the rest of that document may reduce you to gibbering goo.
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.
We did the same thing, except we didn't have computers, we had to write machine code literally "by hand". Co-workers would take turns playing different registers and the manager would be the CPU chugging along. It took us a while to compile, but we were men.
Oh, and we did this at midnight, outside, in late january in the middle of Minnesota, barefoot, and we loved it.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Bugzilla is both practical and reliable - and it is used on some VERY large projects (tracking hundreds of thousands of bugs).
We use it to track not just bugs, but feature requests and issues for our IT department. It fits what we need very well. The nearest commercial offering is unjustifiably expensive and is a lot less flexible than Bugzilla. It's always a question of the right tool for the right job - but for what we do (and what many projects out there do), Bugzilla fits perfectly - reliably and practically.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows