My only comment is that you are describing issues that plaugue most open source projects... Rough around the edges, poor documentation, illogical choices on UI design.... I have seen few if any open source projects that try to do as much as Farcry that do not suffer from these exact issues.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of real_jax Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 9:46 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [farcry-dev] Some constructive criticism. Hi all, I recently started to use Farcry. After it being around for a decade I finally decided to give it a try. I must admit that I am impressed with it's possiblities and I will definately keep using it in the future for personal projects. Now using Farcry on a professional level is a totally different story. All things mentioned below are not meant to bash farcry and I hope this will not get me flamed, they are just the things I came across in a few days of playing with Farcry. I might not be right about all of them, and if I am wrong then all the better. Here's why I think I can't use Farcry as a professional solution: ) system requirements/ slow cms ? I deployed Farcry on a slow system, I am the first one to admit. This system (Pentium III 1.0 Ghz, 512 MB, CF 7.02, SQL server) never suffered from performance problems before (Even with apps using the Coldspring and Transfer framework). Farcry's CMS is, however, dead slow. I realise that it has to do with the hardware I am running it on, but I have no clue as to what Farcry's system requirements are or better, what the recommended hardware is. - lot of rough edges Farcry's cms looks great, but I can't help feeling that some options/menu choices seem illogical, and others are vague. Here are some examples: - To me it seems 'Content' and 'site' are one and the same. They should not be on different tabs. Or have different names and not offer similar functionality. - When adding an image to the library it says 'FitInside' underneath the Source image form element. FitInside where? What does that mean? - when that image is added and I select it, then click the 'approve' button it asks me to enter some comments. After submitting I am presented with a screen where it says the item is in draft. ? But I just approved it right? Apparently not, because now I can(must?) approve again. - some of the text displayed in buttons doesn't fit, making them illegible. - there is a plugins tab that lists one plugin (google maps), and there is a plugins config file that talks about 3 different plugins none of which are mentioned on the plugins tab. I am pretty sure I was asked If I wanted to use a CFXimage plugin during setup as well. It is not on the tab, nor in the config file. Confusing. - the context menu's that appear after right-clicking a tree item, will only close when you select an item OR when clicked *above* the displayed menu. (tested in FF 2.0.0.11) The above mentioned examples are just a few, there are more to be found. - Documentation It seems almost as if all open source projects suffer from the same problem: Documentation. Farcry is, alas, no different. A wiki is not *the* answer to all documentation problems. Especially not a wiki that has lots of open/dead ends, and makes things more confusing then provide clearity. Most of the answers I was seeking, answers to common questions, where found in the mailinglist. And that says it all. I am apparently not the only one. How about something simple as little help popups/ tooltips on the farcry cms pages? Why is there, after so many years of development, no help system? Other problems/issues I ran into: - version info ? I was not able to detect what version of Farcry I was actually using. There is no about box, there is no info at the login screen. Edit: my eye accidentally fell upon the hard to read, small text in the lower right corner of the cms and there it is mentioned. - languages broken ? It seems Farcry's multilanguage possibillities are broken in release 4.x - Friendly URLS I only got friendly URLS to work after fiddling around with some config files, and reading through a lot of emails from the mailinglist. It then failed because it couldn't find 404.cfm. I created one, which made the FU's work,but the 404.cfm doesnt seem to do anything. When I enter a non excisting FU, I am presented with a totally blank page. - reporting. The reporting feature is indeed a very nice one. But what if I already have one I'd like to use? There seems to be no way to switch farcry's reporting system off. Farcry needs to keep track of visited pages some way or the other so this means extra overhead I don't need when I use external reporting tools. - And finally, what really confused me: When creating HTML pages, it took me while before I understood how to use uploaded images in the body part. You need to first have a relationship and have an image selected in the associated media. (why are those items draggable there?, why can I tick items on and off, only for deleting?). When clicking the 'open library' button to add items to that associated media only sometimes the html screen upon returning is updated. Items *are* added, they just don't show up in the screen. When an item is in the associated media list, only then the 'related object content templates' button ( the one that has the farcry logo in it) is usefull. It shows all related content, but has some weird behavior: *Only* when an item is being previewed first, it can be inserted. And when I click the insert button, the image is inserted but the next click (any click, anywhere) in the 'related object content templates' window closes it. This means that when I want to add 25 images, I have to reopen the window 25 times. When adding an html page though the same popup it requires me to select a 'display type'. The dropdown is empty and thus I cant add anything. I probably have to set up a display type somewhere, but.. ah well.. back to the mailinglist I guess.. This is all, to put it mildly, counter intuitive. Sure, after a lot of trial and error I will probably figure it out, but it makes me feel like a (dumb) user. Suppose you are a user. And you are left in charge of your companies website and it's content, to be managed with this version of farcry. Be honest.. A lot of criticism, I know. But meant to be constructive. It is not my intention to bash Farcry. Far from it. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Some-constructive-criticism.-tp14255163s621p14255163.h tml Sent from the FarCry - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "farcry-dev" group. 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