Good morning - I appreciate hearing from several communities members their frustrations and suggestions for using the web client.
Showstoppers for me are: - The inability to edit item attributes in the copy editor of more than one item at a time. - Losing settings and workstation registration after clearing the browser cache or restarting the computer. - The frequent need to clear the browser cache because of system freeze. - Several functions require being applied twice before the the function is performed. - Dymo printers aren't compatible with the web client. I chose the top five from my list of thirty-six. Thank you. Diane Disbro Branch Manager/Circulation Coordinator Union Branch Scenic Regional Library 308 Hawthorne Drive Union, MO 63084 (636) 583-3224 On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 3:08 PM, Kathy Lussier <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Diane, > > I'm sorry to hear your frustration, but I can also empathize. While > working on a recent project to sponsor more bug fixes for the web client, I > also got discouraged as new bugs were reported, particularly when they were > ones that would have made our priority list if we had known about them at > the time we were selecting bugs to fix. To keep myself from getting > discouraged, I found it helped to keep some things in mind. > > - Despite the current open bugs, the web client has come a long way just > in the past year. Setting aside the addition of serials and offline, there > has been a lot of bug fixing over the last months. In many cases, the > fixes have been for what I consider to be showstopper bugs. I continued to > see this work even today as I was going through my bug mail. It might be > useful for the community to track statistics of how many web client bugs > are getting fixed on a monthly basis to help us see the progress that's > been done. Looking at the 3.0 point release notes is also a good way to see > how much work has been done. > > - There were many people, including myself, who spent a lot of time > testing the web client when the code was initially written, but, no matter > how much testing was done, we knew that there are just some bugs that just > won't be found until people start using it in production. This isn't unique > to Evergreen or open-source software, but is something I've seen when using > proprietary software as well. We tried to catch some of these bugs by > having 2.12 available for trial use in production, but I don't think most > sites really started using the web client heavily until 3.0, which was > just released in October. I would say the flurry of bug reporting since > that time is an expected part of the process of eventually getting to a > more stable web client. This is also why we are keeping the xul client > around through the 3.1 release, because we knew it would take time to get > the web client to where it needs to be for all Evergreen users to move to > it. > > I still remember the early days of the Template Toolkit catalog. I was > equally discouraged about bugs and missing features, but as more sites > started using it, they made sure features important to them were fixed or > added, and we now have a stable and feature rich public catalog. > > - I'm worried about stating this the wrong way, but we also have to > remember the number of bugs we've learned to live with under the xul > client. I'm not saying we should just learn to live with the web client > bugs, but they certainly are more noticeable now because they are new. > There are also several xul client bugs we were able to close out because > they were fixed in the web client. The important thing is that the bugs are > open and known. Evergreen sites can see where the problems are and > ultimately choose to focus on addressing the ones most important to them. > > Having said all of this, I do think it's important that if there are > showstopper bugs in the web client (not annoyances, but things that really > prevent you from using the web client), we need to identify those to > increase the likelihood that they will be fixed ahead of other bugs. For > example, one of the groups I work with recently set the bug priority to > High for a handful of bugs they considered to be showstoppers. Back in the > Template Toolkit days, there was a tag we used in Launchpad that identified > bugs we thought should be fixed before removing the old catalog from > Evergreen. Maybe we could consider doing something similar for the web > client. > > Kathy > > > > On 03/16/2018 03:27 PM, Diane Disbro wrote: > > Good afternoon - > > I volunteered to keep track of Webby problems for the Missouri Evergreen > circulation committee. I am pretty discouraged. My library began using > Webby in December but there were so many frustrations that we stopped after > about a month. My spreadsheet of problems now has thirty-five issue on it. > Every time a new bug report is sent out my heart sinks. > Diane Disbro > Branch Manager/Circulation Coordinator > Union Branch > Scenic Regional Library > 308 Hawthorne Drive > <https://maps.google.com/?q=308+Hawthorne+Drive+%0D%0A+++++++++++++++++++++++++Union,+MO+%C2%A0+%C2%A0+63084&entry=gmail&source=g> > Union, MO 63084 > <https://maps.google.com/?q=308+Hawthorne+Drive+%0D%0A+++++++++++++++++++++++++Union,+MO+%C2%A0+%C2%A0+63084&entry=gmail&source=g> > (636) 583-3224 > > > -- > Kathy Lussier > Project Coordinator > Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative(508) [email protected] > Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier > >
