As we get close to releasing Geronimo 2.1 and look beyond, I'd like to discuss a few usability improvements we can do to G. I am cross-posting this to the user-list so that we can get a direct feedback from our dear users.
1. Dynamic status messages. Some operations may take a certain amount of time which could make the administrator uneasy as he waits. On a local machine, he has the luxury of tailing the geronimo.log or seeing the startup terminal. On a remote machine, he is almost flying blind in the absence of any dynamically updating status messages. It would be nice if we had another portlet at the bottom that showed status of the operation being performed. This is really useful for long running operations. 2. Geronimo Workbench. With the addition of features like "Plan Creator" and "Create Plugin", the Admin Console has slowly begun to tread into the domain of tooling. Now we are introducing features for monitoring the server. It's debatable whether such features should even exist in the console. Purists might want the console to be solely for configuration of the server. But given the fact, that they are already there, we should consider creating tabs at the top or sectional categories in the navigation menu. Since we have a navigation tree which does not collapse, we have already crossed a point where we have to scroll down to see all the links. This is a usability no-no. It's time to transform the Console to a Workbench as more Tooling and Monitoring features find their way in. 3. Plugin Creator Enhancements: Our current "plugin create" feature in the console is limited to exporting an already deployed configuration. It does not even include the geronimo-plugin.xml inside the exported car. It would be nice to enhance this tool such that any plugin can be created based on a set of already existing plugins as dependencies. This should allow users to create simple plugins without having to learn maven or the car-maven-plugin. 4. Enhanced logging framework which can specify logging filters at the package level. Please feel free to discuss the merits and demerits of these features and/or add to the list. Cheers Prasad.
