With the release of fixx 1.6 we also published a basic REST API so you tech heads can create mashups to interface with fixx for your bug tracking needs. To get the ball rolling, Mark decided to go ahead and create a time-tracking widget using Adobe Air.
What's really nifty about Adobe Air is that it's completely cross platform, so whatever flavour of Operating System your currently rolling with, Marks widget will work fine with it.
Since we're all about Open-Source here at the lab, that's exactly what we decided to do with it, as "fixx-track" can be downloaded here, so give it a try for yourself...I'm sure you'll be impressed! Alternatively, go one better and extend it to meet your workflows.
Just to make clear this isn't an official release from hedgehog lab, as you can read Mark's experiences creating fixx track on his blog. It's more an opportunity to stress the cool things you can do with our fixx API, and we hope that this release will create some motivation for the programmers out there, to see the potential behind this opportunity. We'll even showcase your work on our site if we think it's good! Why don't you download a copy of fixx to play about with our uber API to see what you're made of.
Another small but equally useful tip I'd like to share with our readers is the ability to show and quickly navigate to any recently viewed issues within fixx. Access to this list is universal across fixx`s entirety and can be activated by hovering over the clock icon present in the bottom right corner of your screen.
This action brings into focus a list of the most recent issues this user has viewed, showing the corresponding Issue ID and Title for each of these in turn. Once present the user is able to navigate to each of these issues by selecting the appropriate one from this list.
The user also has the option to clear their history from this menu if they wish to do so. A point to note is that this pane remains present whilst scrolling and dissapears after a short period of inactivity.
The rationale behind this particular piece of functionality is to provide an easy means to navigate fixx without breaking system state by pressing your browsers back button. So the next time your busy jumping back and forth between a set of issues your currently working on, keep this feature in mind to max out your productivity levels!
I know a few of you have been holding your breath for this one, and we are pretty excited about this release too. Quite strange, considering 1.7 is
actually a bug fix release, rather than a feature-intensive one.
Nevertheless, we are very excited about the massive performance gains 1.7 gives and a reliable API. We have some interesting API-related tools and blog posts in the pipeline, so keep an eye out.
Our next stop is 1.8, which will be our final feature-intensive release for the 1.x branch (everything after that will be bug fix releases). Yes, this does mean that fixx 2.0 is already in development, and boy is it looking good! The biggest feature going into 1.8 will be a more complete API, with all the missing functionality
implemented, and some serious bundled tools/scripts for Source Control Integration and bespoke migration of bug tracking systems.
We love receiving feedback and suggestions via our people powered forums, and 99% of the time these cover important points which we resolve as soon as possible in order to maintain high levels of customer service.
It`s a rare thing, but there have been times in the past where suggestions have been made for features that are already present within fixx, similar to the insights I shared in my previous post. In this post I am going to share another of these with you.
A great example is the results of a filter, unless specified, these can return a list of any matching issues spanning over a number of projects. The way they are presented currently, shows various issue attributes such as its ID, Priority, status, Type, Title and who it`s Assigned to.
One suggestion was to add more columns to the filtered list of results which would present more meta-data to the current user, such as the Project it falls under, when the issue was created and when it`s due to be completed by.
This is a very valid point, and we took this into consideration whilst designing fixx, and we came to the conclusion that the information which is currently onscreen is the most important and fitted the workflows we created during the design phase.
To make sure people don`t go without, we also implemented a hover activated Quick Information box over each Issue ID which displays the remaining issue attributes as can be seen in the screenshot below. To show the Quick Information box, all you need to do is hover your mouse over the issue ID for a couple of seconds.
I`m betting that a lot of you were not aware of this feature at all. There are a few more of these posts on the way, so make sure to watch this space for more great tips.
