[Zope] Problems with demo server of Proiektor

Peter Bengtsson mail@peterbe.com
Wed, 30 May 2001 12:38:06 +0200


I tried the Proiektor demo server and it looks promising.

1) The Mini calendar should highlight todays date.

2) The address book link on the right should be "Search Address Book", not
"Address Book" (since the link on the left side does something completely
different)
    It would be nice if one could - in the Mini Address Book - do both
Search and Add. or even a link saying <pseudoenglish>Search and if fail,
add</pseudoenglish>.

3) The Address Book thing in the right pane doesn't work (JavaScript
disabled Opera 5.02 Windows). Naughty boy. You are using JavaScript to
submit the form!

4) When I in the quick Address Book search type in a firstname, I expect to
be able to just hit Enter and that submits the form. This is sometimes buggy
in NS, but I know that it is something users are expecting to be able to do
in IE and Opera on Windows.

5) When adding an entry to the addressbook, the tab key jumps between the
input fields zig-zag. It should take you from "First name" to "Middle name"
to "Last Lame" (notice the spelling). Use the tabindex="2" HTML attribute.

6) It's not possible to click entries in the Address Book to edit them or
see more info.
This for example returns a 404
http://demo.iuveno-net.de/Proiektor/Organizer/acl_users/2/Persons/2//Contact
s/9/editContactForm

7) Clicking the Delete link in Address Book gives you this message
Error Type: NameError
Error Value: REQUEST

8) Copying a URL from an inlogged session browser into a non-logged-in gives
this ugly message:
Error Type: AttributeError
Error Value: canAccessObject

9) In the Task Tree, what does the little plus symbol mean? For some reason
Opera won't show me the ALT of the image when I roll the mouse over it. And
the icon itself isn't intuitive.

10) In the Task Tree the priority shouldn't be an integer. What does 1 mean
in contrast to 5??
Use 'high' 'normal' and 'low' instead. And I think three priority options is
enough.

11) On the demo server changeing or adding a Task is impossible. It just
returns 404's http://demo.iuveno-net.de/Proiektor/Organizer/acl_users/2
And List of all Tasks doesn't work either.

12) Why is status "Halted" by default when you add a Project?

13) """Should be a "refresh this page" option link.

What do you mean?

I know! When you add a note, and click "Save" you'd expect to see your note
in the list of other Notes. IE autorefreshes.
Add a feature for controlling the chachedatetime of the templates. <a
href="submitsave.html?setcachdate=1second">Save</a>""" % from the Notes
page.

14) View Resources in demo in Group Functions doesn't work. What does that
do?

15) For the whole tablestructure, I reckon you should expand it a little bit
more. There is still plenty of whitespace out there to fill with content.
(this is a skin issue perhaps, but it should be changed for the default).

16) A second click on the "E-mail" column in the Address Book should reverse
the order. Like Windows and X does.

It's not very fast (yet 10 times faster than worldpilot). But this is
probably because of other reasons than the code, right. What might be the
bottleneck so that I can think of that when I install one.
There's great potential in this, but there are little things to think about
first.
Keep it simple. You've done that well. Use HTML form buttons instead of
hyperlinks to do things like "Save" or "Change" or "Cancel". Even though
that serves no purpose, it's what people are used to. A hyperlink is a
connection to another reference somewhere else and doesn't give the feeling
of transmitting away information like a button does.

Buy a PalmPilot and try to imitate their interface. It's really good and
well thought of. Note how has it is.

The AddressBook product (http://www.zope.org/Members/morphex/AddressBook) is
only an addressbook, and seems to be a little bit more advanced (at least
its planning) when it comes to importing and exporting contacts using the
vCard format.
I'd like to be able to upload my M$ Outlook contacts in all at ease and
upload my Psion vCard files without having to click Save and Confirm
buttons.
I also want to be able to export one or more contacts in different ways.
Any plans for enhancements to the Address Book in this direction? I'd loved
to help you.
I noticed the note about "Palm Pilot synchronization." in the "Planned
Features" list. That's great!

How easy would it be to add on my own interfaces to this? I have lots of
BugTrackingPseudoIssue meta_type objects around that I want to interface to.
Is this easy to do? Plus can I build it so that it only works for certain
users?

Now, for the most exciting feature. Since speed is everything and you can't
ever get good speed with web apps like this. The only way to get the best
performance is to download (mirror) the HTML and keep them offline so that
your startpage in Opera can be
http://localhost:8080/staticproiektor/overview?username=peter&password=bengt
sson.
The frontpage index_html can be downloaded as static HTML by a cronjob every
1 hour or what ever and using some brains it should be possible to
pre-render the static pages so that they know exactly when and when not to
use the real live site.
If you have a busy cronjob, the only thing that needs to be online is the
database. And each of your static page should have a manual refrech button
that says "Refresh this page by downloading the current version from the
online site"
What do you see in the future for this?


Phew, very long email. I was excited by the demo and I now want to install
it.
Here we go!

Peter