BTW, the newest version now supports per project custom fields so no code changes would be required to do this in version 2.2.
Also hopefully I'll be adding a full report generation system in 2.4 probably based on jfreereport and jfreechart so that might make your reorting easier also.
I didn't think registering on the site would be too big of an inconvience if you wanted help or liked the product, but would cut down on spammers. In an effort to make things easier I have removed the requirement to register to post bugs or feature requests.
I'm not sure about the bug with not logging out you mention, it should work correctly, my first guess is that the account you were using had autologin enabled which would negate the logout, but I'll take a look at it.
Requiring J2EE does increase the time to install, and in fact ITracker won't even run on Tomcat/Oracle since Tomcat doesn't supply an EJB container. But it will run on other application servers such as WebLogic with Oracle.
Thanks for the comments though. Any feedback is better than no feedback.
I actually was a Remedy developer for awhile and the product just sucks from the web point of view. The windows client was acceptable. I also did a lot of work on bugzilla for awhile to customize it the way I wanted but gave up after awhile. Both of these applications are very popular but have horrible interfaces in my opionion.
One goal in creating the ITracker interface was to make it as simple as possible and present all relevent information on a single page. These goals probably negate some of the things you propose like tabs and iframes. But I do agree that the interface could probably be spiffied up in some ways. If you have some ideas and can convince me email me or post on the forums. I figured a simple clean interface was good for the web potion and if you wanted a more advanced view you could write a custom client using the API.
As for the J2EE dependency, the main reason I wrote ITracker was to learn J2EE:) I needed a project that could keep my interest while teaching me more EJB stuff. You can see some of this in that I wrote all the deployment descriptors by and andd didn't use any IDE just so I could learn the ins and outs. Heck I even found a few bugs in JBoss along the way:)
I do run a demo but it is on a very slow machine which I'm sure turns off some people. I also recent wrote a quick install guide if you jsut want to get it up and running locally, but I'm not sure how many people use it.
I've run into the same thing as you. I wrote an open source issue tracking system and didn't get a lot of feedback either. I've had about 12000 downloads over the past year but probably less than 20 real bug reports and even less feature requests. I've tried the freshmeat, sourceforge, google, and forum routes and it doesn't change much.
I'd love to find a good way to attract more user participation, mainly because I'd like to improve the product for my own use and I've found that other people tend to give me really good ideas for features, when they aren't bogged down in the actual coding like I am.
It is difficult to even get people to tell to drop by and "vote" in an online poll to tell me their environment so I know where to focus my efforts to get the most benefit to the community.
One good thing about writing my own software though is I'm much more likely to write to an author of an application I use to thank them, or drop by a forum and let them know I use it. Heck I'll even write bug reports now:)
I've used HostPro http://www.hostpro.com before and found them to be pretty reliable and they have decent features. You get servlets, 200MB space, plus mySQL access for something like $40/mo with a $40 setup.
I used them to actually run a commerical site, but for personal development I just got an old P90 and put RedHat, Apache, jserv and mySQL on it to test my stuff with. It was much easier being able to do anything I wanted to the server and DB for testing, plus I had like 4 GB of space. If you have the time and don't need reliable or fast access, I'd suggest you go that route.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the invites!
If anyone has a spare invite, I'd love to join:
carroll (dot) jason (at) gmail (dot) com
Thanks!
BTW, the newest version now supports per project custom fields so no code changes would be required to do this in version 2.2.
Also hopefully I'll be adding a full report generation system in 2.4 probably based on jfreereport and jfreechart so that might make your reorting easier also.
I didn't think registering on the site would be too big of an inconvience if you wanted help or liked the product, but would cut down on spammers. In an effort to make things easier I have removed the requirement to register to post bugs or feature requests.
I'm not sure about the bug with not logging out you mention, it should work correctly, my first guess is that the account you were using had autologin enabled which would negate the logout, but I'll take a look at it.
Requiring J2EE does increase the time to install, and in fact ITracker won't even run on Tomcat/Oracle since Tomcat doesn't supply an EJB container. But it will run on other application servers such as WebLogic with Oracle.
Thanks for the comments though. Any feedback is better than no feedback.
I actually was a Remedy developer for awhile and the product just sucks from the web point of view. The windows client was acceptable. I also did a lot of work on bugzilla for awhile to customize it the way I wanted but gave up after awhile. Both of these applications are very popular but have horrible interfaces in my
:) I needed a project that could keep my interest while teaching me more EJB stuff. You can see some of this in that I wrote all the deployment descriptors by and andd didn't use any IDE just so I could learn the ins and outs. Heck I even found a few bugs in JBoss along the way :)
opionion.
One goal in creating the ITracker interface was to make it as simple as possible and present all relevent information on a single page. These goals probably negate some of the things you propose like tabs and iframes. But I do agree that the interface could probably be spiffied up in some ways. If you have some ideas and can convince me email me or post on the forums. I figured a simple clean interface was good for the web potion and if you wanted a more advanced view you could write a custom client using the API.
As for the J2EE dependency, the main reason I wrote ITracker was to learn J2EE
I do run a demo but it is on a very slow machine which I'm sure turns off some people. I also recent wrote a quick install guide if you jsut want to get it up and running locally, but I'm not sure how many people use it.
I've run into the same thing as you. I wrote an open source issue tracking system and didn't get a lot of feedback either. I've had about 12000 downloads over the past year but probably less than 20 real bug reports and even less feature requests. I've tried the freshmeat, sourceforge, google, and forum routes and it doesn't change much.
:)
I'd love to find a good way to attract more user participation, mainly because I'd like to improve the product for my own use and I've found that other people tend to give me really good ideas for features, when they aren't bogged down in the actual coding like I am.
It is difficult to even get people to tell to drop by and "vote" in an online poll to tell me their environment so I know where to focus my efforts to get the most benefit to the community.
One good thing about writing my own software though is I'm much more likely to write to an author of an application I use to thank them, or drop by a forum and let them know I use it. Heck I'll even write bug reports now
I've used HostPro http://www.hostpro.com before and found them to be pretty reliable and they have decent features. You get servlets, 200MB space, plus mySQL access for something like $40/mo with a $40 setup.
I used them to actually run a commerical site, but for personal development I just got an old P90 and put RedHat, Apache, jserv and mySQL on it to test my stuff with. It was much easier being able to do anything I wanted to the server and DB for testing, plus I had like 4 GB of space. If you have the time and don't need reliable or fast access, I'd suggest you go that route.
Jason