Archive

Resizable textarea with a slider

Published on August 11, 2006 in Factory Nova and Interface. 0 Comments

The next beta of Factory Nova will feature a new interface element which was invented in our R&D department (read: by me and Ivan).

Due to our design restrictions we wanted to display an input field for a description of the uploaded file as a one line text box. Usually this size is more then enough for a short file description. But, as we’ve discovered our beta testers were not using the description like we did (no surprise here) and they wanted to be able to enter several lines of text in the description. In other words they wanted a textarea field.

So after some experiments we’ve invented a new interface element — an auto-resizable-with-a-slider textarea. The main idea is that at first textarea looks like a usual one line text field (and takes the same amount of space on the screen, which was very important to us), but then as you type it can become bigger and turn into a real textarea — and with a nice slider effect too.

Here is how it works: Video (2.8 Mb)

Hard work of product support

Published on July 31, 2006 in Software Business and Stuffed Tracker. 2 Comments

Doing support for a product is usually a pleasant job. You help great people to understand your great product better.

But, unfortunately, this is not always the case. Sometimes you get an aggressive person on the other side of the email communication pipeline that doesn’t trust you from the start. Whatever you will say to such person, he will turn against you. Oh, and he will also try to say the last word.

We are lucky that we haven’t met such people in 10 months during which the new re-launched version of Stuffed Tracker is on the market. But everything happens some day. And such person just ruined my whole day today.

That’s actually the hard part of the support job. You can’t get angry on the client, whatever he says to you or however aggressive he is. Your job is to kindly show why the person is wrong. That’s what I did today, although I feel very bad right now (you know when somebody says something very unfair to you and you can’t open the person’s eyes — he just doesn’t listen to you).

I am sure, good support service should always be polite and kind. That’s the key. This can often even save the situation. But not this time. Oh well.

Adwords is not good for software developers?

Published on July 28, 2006 in Software Business and Stuffed Tracker. 4 Comments

I recently had an email conversation with our client who is using Stuffed Tracker to track effectiveness of his advertising. The client’s company is selling web software just as we do. He complained that he can’t make his adwords campaigns generate him sales.

And we have exactly the same problem! Traffic from Adwords seems to be of less quality for us compared to other advertising sources.

What’s the reason for this? Maybe software developers are not good at writing short text creatives and buying the right words? Or, maybe the majority of the people clicking on adwords are not looking to purchase the software?

Factory Nova is in Beta

Published on May 25, 2006 in Factory Nova. 8 Comments

Who could have thought? This longest journey does finally come to an end.

Factory Nova Installation Wizard

10 minutes ago I’ve posted a beta version of Factory Nova on a closed forum for our beta testers.

We currently accept everyone interested in taking part in the beta cycle of the product. Factory Nova should be in beta for around 2 months according to our plans. Around the beginning of August 2006 the final 1.0 version should be released.

Here is what you need to do to become a beta tester:

1. Register on our forums if you haven’t already done so.

2. Send me (user “Sergey”) a private message with a request to become a part of the Factory Beta Team.

3. After a short period you will be added to a proper members group on our forums and will get access to a closed Factory Nova Beta forum where you will be able to download the product, post your thoughts, ideas and of course bug reports.

Please note that we are in a GMT +4 timezone and I will have to give you the access to the beta forum manually. This means that after you will send a private message to me, you might need to wait for some hours before you will get the access.

Three days until beta

Published on May 22, 2006 in Factory Nova. 3 Comments

The countdown continues.

All your factory are belong to us!

Published on May 19, 2006 in Factory Nova. 6 Comments

All your factory are belong to us!

PS. Just in case

One week until beta

Published on May 14, 2006 in Factory Nova. 1 Comment

As you can see we do count down, it was two weeks and now it is only one week! Yay!

As a bonus for waiting here is a screenhost of the tags screen in Factory Nova. You can assign multiple tags to a task and use this in different ways. In the Stuffed Tracker project we use tags to specify for which version a task has to be finished. When we then look at the list of all tags we can clearly see the progress for each version.

Tags in Factory Nova

Two weeks until beta

Published on May 1, 2006 in Factory Nova. 3 Comments

You can start the countdown now. We are finishing the translation of the Factory Nova interface and doing a bunch of small but needed things, like creating a web-based installation wizard. But generally the beta is ready.

Traditionally, we have very long holidays in May in this country. So this delays things a bit, but not for long. As I’ve wrote in the title of this post — two weeks and a beta should be announced.

Thanks for bearing with us all this time.

Factory Nova English interface

Published on April 29, 2006 in Factory Nova. 1 Comment

Ladies and gentlemen, I am excited to present to you the world’s premier of the Factory Nova English interface! You can’t see it anywhere else — only and exclusively in this blog.

Don’t forget to click on the thumbnails to see full size images!

Screen #1

This is the main tasks page in Factory Nova. To get to it, you first select a project, so the tasks that you see on this page are limited by only one project.

The main task view is tree-based, but you can also see the same tasks as a flat list (one of the many cool features of Factory Nova). Children tasks are loaded with Ajax when you click on a plus sign available to the left of any task which has children.

Factory Nova English Interface

Screen #2

The same tree view of tasks, but this time I’ve opened a filter layer. In Factory Nova, you can filter the tasks tree by a variety of parameters: a user to whom the task is assigned, priority, deadline, etc. The filters can be saved and easily re-used later.

Factory Nova English Interface

Screen #3

Again the main tree view. This time I’ve selected some of the tasks (they have a yellow background). You can see that at the top, instead of a filter, there is now a new select box that allows me to select a new status for the selected tasks. You can select multiple tasks in the tree and then do some most common operations with all of them at once: change status. assign to a user, close, change deadline, etc.

Also, on the same screen you can see a floating div opened with all possible actions that you can do with a particular task. This div is opened when you click on the “o” icon (for “options”) to the right of the task.

Factory Nova English Interface

Screen #4

Finally, this is a so called “Overview” page. You get to it when you click on the project in the list of all projects. As you can guess, the main idea of this page is to show a brief overview of all activity in the project. It also shows quick stats for all members of the project team.

Factory Nova English Interface

Getting even closer

Published on April 19, 2006 in Factory Nova. 2 Comments

Still in Russian, but looks fantastic now:

Factory Nova Projects Listing