Joomla Forge question

[malibu]

Newb question.  I'm not sure I understand the concept behind "Join this Project" in the forge.  If I want full access and trackability to a project that I implement on a site(s); is the intent that I 'join' that project.  That seems to be the only way to quickly get to a project without searching for it every time.

Should I join every project I use?

[yerg]

Suggest you check out the Forge thread

[malibu]

I musta missed it because it was in big letters with it's own Forum... 

:: edit::

I've spent an hour or so breezing thru the various threads in the Forge Forum... and I have not found a good answer to my initial question.  There does NOT seem to be a way to track (or monitor) a project unless you join it.  Unless the developers are working on a 'subscribe' function to allow non-members to monitor the progress of a project.  Is there a public 'role' that can be assigned to non-contributing members?  I need clarification.

[gsbe]

Create a username at the J!Forge and log in. When you view projects while logged in you have the option to monitor their releases. For example, log in and visit this page:

• http://developer.joomla.org/sf/frs/do/viewSummary/projects.joomla/frs

You'll see check boxes to the left of the project name and the "Monitor" button at the bottom right.

[malibu]

That would allow me to monitor an existing release of a project, but not notification of news, new file releases, etc.

:: edit::

You know what.  I think I've figured out how to the tools that are there to help do what I want to do.  I guess I thought it would be easier to just subscribe to a project (similar to a thread); but I think I see the logic behind how it is set up.  Just not intuitive for me.

[kenmcd]

Monitoring Projects
Still no way to monitor a project as opposed to monitoring files, releases, bugs, etc.
Thus no way to monitor a project with no releases.
This issue has been discussed before and was supposed to be addressed one day.

Forge team has been rather silent.
Last Boomzilla post was over 1 1/2 months ago.
Last sustantial posts were 2 1/2 months ago.

After using this forge every day to update the CMM resoures list - I have really learned to hate it.

Search
The search is only way to find anything and it is a usability nightmare.
- no defaults, you have to set them over and over and over and over and over . . .
- many partial strings are not found, I cannot figure out why some work and others do not
    (please read the Useit search usability guidelines)

Navigation
- All Projects list page arrows are at the bottom of the summary pages
- - click, page down, click, page down, click, page down, click, page down . . .
- no way to quickly page through the All Projects list pages
- - page 10 still shows page 1-10 links at the bottom
- - from page 10 click on right arrow, this takes you to page 11, and 11-20 at the bottom
- - try getting to the last page this way
- best workaround - click on icon at top right and show all 521 projects on one page  - that ought to help the server load

I set this as my forge bookmark (all 521 projects on one page):
http://developer.joomla.org/sf/sfmain/d ... esize=9999

Looks pretty. Using it everyday is a PITA.

[zsprackett]

Forge team has been rather silent.
Last Boomzilla post was over 1 1/2 months ago.
Last sustantial posts were 2 1/2 months ago.

Sorry for the lag in posts from the forge team.  I'm here now and will be helping Colin answer questions in here.  Colin travels an awful lot and unfortunately web forums don't lend themselves to offline usage.

After using this forge every day to update the CMM resoures list - I have really learned to hate it.

Sorry to hear that.  We're working on addressing some of the issues.

Search
The search is only way to find anything and it is a usability nightmare.
- no defaults, you have to set them over and over and over and over and over . . .
- many partial strings are not found, I cannot figure out why some work and others do not
    (please read the Useit search usability guidelines)

Can you give me some examples?  I'll happily raise bugs internally if you can show me what is failing for you.

Navigation
- All Projects list page arrows are at the bottom of the summary pages
- - click, page down, click, page down, click, page down, click, page down . . .
- no way to quickly page through the All Projects list pages
- - page 10 still shows page 1-10 links at the bottom
- - from page 10 click on right arrow, this takes you to page 11, and 11-20 at the bottom
- - try getting to the last page this way
- best workaround - click on icon at top right and show all 521 projects on one page  - that ought to help the server load

Can you explain the usage case for quickly jumping through all projects?  Would this be a problem if search was working properly for you?

Thanks
-z

[gsbe]

zsprackett - thanks for posting here. It helps to know that someone is listening.

Could you give us a general idea of what issues are being worked on? This would help me know what was inside the scope of current renovations and what might be put on the back burner.

As you know, there are various threads on this forum outlining flaws in the UI and project management flow of J!Forge. Some of kenmcd's concerns in this thread are mentioned elsewhere. Many of us have been working with the SFEE daily both as users and project members so the situation is ripe for feeback.

I think that it is important to know to what degree and in which directions we could expect change at J!Forge. This would the community prioritize their requests to those working on the J!Forge.

Thanks again for being involved!

[zsprackett]

zsprackett - thanks for posting here. It helps to know that someone is listening.

Could you give us a general idea of what issues are being worked on? This would help me know what was inside the scope of current renovations and what might be put on the back burner.

At the moment I'm just coming up to speed on the forums.  While I have been working with Joomla for a while inside of VA, I've been doing it in isolation.  I was recently introduced to the forums and would like to help out here as a VA employee and a 3rd party developer.

In the near future we will be upgrading the forge to SourceForge Enterprise Edition version 4.3.  Version 4.3 adds a number of new features including per project wiki pages and workflow capabilities within trackers.  In addition to new features it also fixes a large number of customer reported issues some of which are performance related.  While this upgrade will not address all issues, I'm optimistic that it will fix some of problems people have been reporting.

As you know, there are various threads on this forum outlining flaws in the UI and project management flow of J!Forge. Some of kenmcd's concerns in this thread are mentioned elsewhere. Many of us have been working with the SFEE daily both as users and project members so the situation is ripe for feeback.

In addition to SourceForge Enterprise Edition maintenance and features, we have also been working on a model for adding some requested functionality outside of SourceForge through Joomla extensions.  There will be some announcements regarding this work in the new year.

[gsbe]

In the near future we will be upgrading the forge to SourceForge Enterprise Edition version 4.3.  Version 4.3 adds a number of new features including per project wiki pages and workflow capabilities within trackers.  In addition to new features it also fixes a large number of customer reported issues some of which are performance related.  While this upgrade will not address all issues, I'm optimistic that it will fix some of problems people have been reporting.

Very optimistic! Welcome to the forums. I can imagine how these specific additions brought with the upcoming 4.3 version would meet many of the concerns about J!Forge's workflow and usability.

Is there a homebase for SEE development that we could keep up with 4.3 progress?

[zsprackett]

Is there a homebase for SEE development that we could keep up with 4.3 progress?

I don't think there is a public place for available for monitoring this stuff yet.  I will do my best to answer questions posed in this forum however and I will also tell you that 4.3 has already been released to customers and the plan is for us to upgrade the Forge in January.

Thanks
-z

[Tonie]

Hi there, welcome to these forums. Hopefully you will have a good time here. I'm not a developer, so I will speak as a user here. I will just try and summarize wishes a lot of users have.

This thread about basically tells a lot: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... 0.html#new. Another much requested feature is a better newslist. We used to have the list at http://www.mamboforge.net. This was a feature that was used a lot, and would be nice to have something like that again.

For the moment a lot of external components are maintained in a Faq here: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,25317.0.html. It would be really nice to have something like that in the forge for the projects that are hosted there.

Welcome again, I will eagerly await the upcoming changes. 

[WillieManillie]

Tracking is difficult with the forge as well is finding projects.

[zsprackett]

Tracking is difficult with the forge as well is finding projects.

By tracking do you mean monitoring the various aspects of a projects progress?

[WillieManillie]

Yes, the lifecycle is a good indication of the status.  Thank you.