Prasad Kashyap wrote:
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.
Can you be more specific here? What operations and how does a message
make things any more dynamic? Is this a web console only concern or is
it also a command line concern?
If we really begin to include multiple portlets on pages then it might
get difficult to associate responses with porlets/actions that initiated
them. It might be more beneficial to provide some interactive feedback
(dojo?) within the portlet.
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.
I agree that the plan creators are more in the domain of tooling and
perhaps should not be part of the console. I think of the web console
as an "Administration Console" rather than just a configuration console
so I think monitoring makes perfect sense to be included. That aside, I
think it makes sense to make the navigation tree collapse. I'd add tabs
as a last resort because this is not always intuitive to the user.
Along with this I think it would be nice if we could enable the
navigation and display area to scroll independently.
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.
Not sure if I follow this one. You can export a deployed something as a
plugin now without learning maven or the car-maven-plugin.
4. Enhanced logging framework which can specify logging filters at the
package level.
This has been proposed before and it is a good idea. It would require a
logging/trace strategy and architecture and a lot of leg work to
implement it across the code ... but I think it would be worth the effort.
Please feel free to discuss the merits and demerits of these features
and/or add to the list.
Cheers
Prasad.
