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.

Comments

Damn!

[mctk]

The installation crashed. Better report that. ...wait a second...

Re:Damn!

[lilmouse]

Silly boy, web interface will still work!

This is actually really really interesting. I can totally see the value this would have for a company that uses Bugzilla as the bug-tracking software. The tree structure would be really handy in certain situations, and for a company, the $99 pricetag is a drop in the bucket. It's not something I would want everyone to use, but for some people who use bugzilla very often for management, this would be handy.

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.

--LWM

Costs $99 per license

[bradbeattie]

Note that Deskzilla, unlike Bugzilla, is not open-source.

Smart Clients

[The Bungi]

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.

Re:License

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:And the point is...?

[Slack3r78]

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.

Re:A conundrum

[eli173]

But how was the *first* compiler compiled?

Just thinking about that makes me head explo[NO CARRIER].

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. ;)

The killer feature here is working offline

[Anonymous Coward]

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. :)