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Visualization of progress reports on the Otter-browser website

2015-01-26, 09:37:09

I appreciate how regularly Emdek posts weekly status updates on the otter-browser project website. Since tracking progress is done on a regular basis, it would be a good idea to use http://waffle.io to visualize the fixed issues and pull-requests. It is completely free for public repos.

You can see an example of how it looks like here https://waffle.io/emdek/otter/metrics/throughput. Other FOSS such as Neovim also use it on their github site. Makes it easier to follow than text. One can always refer to the changelog for more details.

Re: Visualization of progress reports on the Otter-browser website

Reply #1 – 2015-01-26, 09:51:45

I was considering similar concept recently, but fully manual and with extra information, something like:
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/
Table listing all features with their current state, divided into core and backend features (each backend having own columns).
Then I could use it to describe why some specific feature cannot be achieved in specific backend (usually lack of API in underlying library), link to dedicated issues and lots of other stuff which is usually easier to manage manually. ;-)

It would be a wiki page, and snapshot could be applied to each report, with some extra CSS and some other "fancy" tweaks in future.

It's a good idea to follow some conventions from mesa, keep column for "core" even for features depending on backends, to track progress of common parts, like UI etc. (for example API for asking for permission to use geolocation has to be done in each backend separately, as common UI and as common backend API).

Re: Visualization of progress reports on the Otter-browser website

Reply #2 – 2015-01-26, 17:23:12

Sounds good, but they are not mutually exclusive. Waffle deals only with the repo and has nothing to do with the features and status of different modules you propose. Never tried it myself, but once you set it up you should be good to go. Doing it manually no doubt offers a detailed picture, but otoh means more work for you/other contributors.

Re: Visualization of progress reports on the Otter-browser website

Reply #3 – 2015-01-26, 19:09:16

@jango, lets say that main excuse is that I don't like "outsourcing", as such services sometimes go offline etc... ;-)

Re: Visualization of progress reports on the Otter-browser website

Reply #4 – 2015-01-31, 21:40:55

Some anime fansubbing groups report the progress of their work on individual episodes like this:



I find that a simple but effective way to visualize progress of any sort. It uses a simple forum post, that is edited, if progress is made (colour and font weight is changed for the completed task). It could probably be adapted for software development progress visualization. Instead of episodes 1..n, it would name the respective features 1..n that are to be implemented. Instead of the routine tasks, that are usually the same for each episode to be fansubbed, it would list the anticipated implementation steps for the respective feature. Once a step is finished, it would be visually marked. As an additional documentation, the date of completion could also be added in parenthesis behind the task. This might be nice to have for software historians at some point. Also, if work is not linear, additional colours could be used, like yellow for work in progress (tasks that somebody is currently working on). It is also easy to make the task name a link. That way, it could point to an issue tracker or somesuch, if that seemed useful in some cases.

The PC-BSD project also has a nice wiki page for its roadmap to visualize the work in progress, that's worth a look: http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/PC-BSD%C2%AE_Roadmap It uses red, green and yellow colour in the status column besides a textual description like percentage of progress, notice that something has been deferred or other short remarks.

Re: Visualization of progress reports on the Otter-browser website

Reply #5 – 2015-02-01, 07:54:24

@4r3a9n8d2o7m8, these concepts are also interesting, although Radeon Matrix approach seems to be best in our case, where "single feature" like for example managing cookies requires support in both core and implementation in every backend (right now QtWebKit and QtWebEngine, but there will be ore, sooner or later ;-)).

So I guess that the best existing example would be more like this table for okular (I forgot about it until now, which is a shame, since it is closer to what I would like to have):
https://okular.kde.org/formats.php

Initial effort for each approach is very similar (to list such features, split them properly into entries, which requires wast knowledge about internals of Otter and plans for near future), so we need something attractive and readable for all kinds of users (and well, for press too ;-)).

It is really easy to setup skeleton for such table, and after initial effort to document current state it will be easy to maintain (at least once per week, for weekly report).