Improving the Xfce infrastructure: Bugzilla
Bug management is a vital part of any open source project. Today I’m happy to introduce you to yet another project which aims to improve the Xfce infrastructure – you guessed it – the Xfce Bugzilla!
The project to improve the Xfce bug management started quite some time ago. The first tasks in this were unrelated to the infrastructure; the team has done some work to clean up old bugs as well as triaging newer ones. Tasks like that can become extremely tedious if the tools are constantly slowing you down.
To try to remedy this situation we started a project to improve the look and feel of Bugzilla. In addition to just a general facelift we also ended up reorganizing bits here and there and even touch some functionality. I specifically want to highlight a few parts of the project:
- Make bug filing easier and faster than before. We’ve streamlined the bug filing process by removing one unnecessary page load and a click but also by doing a big reorganization in the bug filing page.
- Make bug handling easier and faster than before. In addition to a revamp for the bug filing procedure, the individual bug report pages have had a big update as well; information is now more clearly organized and the long bug description and comments have been brought much closer to the top of the page. We have also merged the status and resolution fields to let you choose the right combination with less clicks – and make it obvious which combinations are possible…
- Allow using search filters on-the-fly. Whenever you are on a search result page with any filters, you can remove them individually from the search. You can now also click the product, component and assignee fields to add additional filters.
- Highlight bug statuses. This is a smaller update, but we’re now using color-coded boxes for bug statuses anywhere they are shown. This should both help users digest information and see where work needs to be done.
Today, we’re finally at the point where we are quite happy with the changes and are ready to make them the default for the Xfce Bugzilla – all users using the default theme have been converted to the new Xfce skin and templates related to this skin. If you have specifically selected any other theme, you will be still using that; if you want to see the new theme, please go change your preferences.
We hope you like the new improvements and that they can make your life easier. As always, if you find any weirdness or bugs with the new skin and templates, file them in Bugzilla against the Bugzilla product on Xfce Bugzilla. Please note that this is not the correct place for bugs about Bugzilla itself – a good way to find out whether something is affecting the Xfce skin and related templates is to check the functionality with another skin enabled.
Improving the Xfce infrastructure: Blog
Along with all Romain mentioned on his blog today, I’ve finished one small bit of infrastructure update after this; the Xfce blog is now sporting a theme that matches the style of the rest of the Xfce websites.
Again, if you find any problems with the new theme, whether in its looks or functionality, file a bug against the blog product on Xfce bugzilla.
Happy reading until the next update – which should happen soon…
Improving the Xfce infrastructure: Website
In addition to porting Xfce to GTK3, the Xfce team has become more active in (at least) one other area: improving the infrastructure. Today I’m happy to tell you that we’ve finished another bit of the infrastructure update: the Xfce website!
The most important feature of the updated website is that it is now fully responsive. You can now browse the website with a huge resolution or with one of the smallest smartphones and the site accommodates to your environment.
The responsive design isn’t limited to just tweaking the site width either; we have also mobile-optimized the slideshow on the front page and a lot more!
On the front page you can see another new feature as well – a section showing the latest articles from the Xfce Blog feed. We have some plans to integrate an all Xfce releases feed to the front page later, but for this we’ll need some other updates for the infrastructure.
Along with these bigger improvements, we’ve fixed a bunch of bugs, updated many HTTP links to their HTTPS counterparts and updated the content to be as up-to-date as possible.
Should you find a bug on the website, please file it against the website product on Xfce Bugzilla.
Enjoy!