Tickets System / To-Do Manager

[blackcell]

Please don't break it, it is still in the debugging phase.  FYI the password changing is disabled. Here are links for multiple users because I think it should boot someone off if it 2 users log in as the same name:

 

User1 - www.gayloraid.com/Tickets/admin/index.php?user=tester2@tickets.com&pass=123456789

User2 - www.gayloraid.com/Tickets/admin/index.php?user=tester3@tickets.com&pass=123456789

User3 - www.gayloraid.com/Tickets/admin/index.php?user=tester4@tickets.com&pass=123456789

User4 - www.gayloraid.com/Tickets/admin/index.php?user=tester5@tickets.com&pass=123456789

User5 - www.gayloraid.com/Tickets/admin/index.php?user=tester6@tickets.com&pass=123456789

User6 - www.gayloraid.com/Tickets/admin/index.php?user=tester7@tickets.com&pass=123456789

User7 - www.gayloraid.com/Tickets/admin/index.php?user=tester8@tickets.com&pass=123456789

User8 - www.gayloraid.com/Tickets/admin/index.php?user=tester9@tickets.com&pass=123456789

 

EDIT:

Feel free to enter data, edit data, close tickets, assign tickets, blah blah blah.

Also, the typical users' interface is here: www.gayloraid.com/Tickets/

[TheFilmGod]

GAYloraid?

 

- bad domain.

[blackcell]

GAYloraid?

 

- bad domain.

What are you talking about?

[blackcell]

Oh, the GAY part of it. First, considering that part of the domain name is my actual name I don't see it on the level you see it. Second, the domain name is for my testing purposes and I guess I should have posted a note saying:

Please critique my web SITE and not my web DOMAIN.

because I thought that might have been part of the forum.

 

Do you have any other feedback besides a post not worth the disk space it is stored on?

 

Didn't think so, you probably didn't even look at the site.

[ober]

Things I don't like:

 

1) Graphics are all very poorly done.

2) You need more color... right now it's a lot of black and gray, very boring.

3) It doesn't play well with large resolutions. It's all smashed to the left of the screen.

4) Submitting a ticket should take you to the status area of your tickets, not just show the form again.

5) Should be cross-browser compatible. I lose respect for developers when they put "works best on X browser" on their sites.

6) Your CSS should be linked, not in the page itself.

7) You are using tables for general layout... this is not the best way to go.

8 ) Your fonts are not consistent: example would be the column contents on the projects screen. They're varying sizes and it does not look uniform.

 

Overall it's not a very friendly interface nor is it appealing to look at. To be commercially acceptable, you should probably consider hiring a designer to do some of the interface for you if you can't produce something better than your current attempt (no offense).

[blackcell]

Overall it's not a very friendly interface nor is it appealing to look at.  To be commercially acceptable, you should probably consider hiring a designer to do some of the interface for you if you can't produce something better than your current attempt (no offense).

Rotflmao. I respect your honesty. I guess I am not a natural that can produce a perfect program first attempt. I know those people are everywhere.

 

1) Graphics are all very poorly done.

What graphics? The banner will be customizable. The little icons were quick and I would be open to suggestions.

2) You need more color... right now it's a lot of black and gray, very boring.

Where could I use color influence? The tabs?

3) It doesn't play well with large resolutions.  It's all smashed to the left of the screen.

Everything is meant to be smashed to the left to deal with varying resolutions. Centered does not flow very well with the top tabs.

4) Submitting a ticket should take you to the status area of your tickets, not just show the form again.

When your in admin mode or submitting a ticket as a user? I believe you have a good point either way.

5) Should be cross-browser compatible.  I lose respect for developers when they put "works best on X browser" on their sites.

Screw IE. The people that believe it is the standard to use it can mod the system to work for it. If you viewed this with IE that is half the problem.

6) Your CSS should be linked, not in the page itself.

My css is linked by file.

7) You are using tables for general layout... this is not the best way to go.

What are your suggestions? I would love to get away from tables.

8 ) Your fonts are not consistent: example would be the column contents on the projects screen.  They're varying sizes and it does not look uniform.

Probably because your viewing it with IE.

 

Did you have any positive feedback?

 

 

[ober]

In response to:

 

1) Mainly the bars (gray)... I didn't realize the banner would be customizable... you might want to throw something in there that looks better from a marketing standpoint.

2) The bars, the background... the tabs actually look decent.  At a bare minimum, I'd use a background image/color for the top area.

3) I understand the problem with the tabs... but your lines stop at a certain point.  You can have a left-aligned site and still have the bars and dividers extend the length of the window.

4) Submitting as a user... I didn't try as admin.

5) I'm viewing from Firefox (version 3 RC2).  And if you say "screw IE", you're going to piss off more than 50% of the people that would use your product.  I'm a firm hater of IE as well, but reality is reality, my friend.

6) If you look at the source of the page, there is a bunch of CSS in your <head> tag.  ??

7) Use CSS for layout?  divs and whatnot...

Again, viewing in Firefox.  I can test it in Opera if you want.

 

As for positive feedback... not much.  I like the tabs, that's about it.  There are a lot of other open source ticket systems that are styled much better and operate more effectively than this.  Plus you're still missing a fair amount of functionality.  I'm not going to list them out... just google other ticket systems and look at the features list and compare it to yours.

[blackcell]

I understand your looking at this from a standpoint of me trying to sell it. If anything I would release it as open source for improvement by people like yourself.

 

IE crusaders can eat dirt. I would prefer the mindless drones not mess with the code and put their touch on it. I would like to see it on Opera just to see it. I might do this though. Reality is reality but there is discrimination isn't an issue when money is not a factor.

 

I have a way of distributing the css source to each page from a file so that I may see it when viewing the html source from the page.

 

I have looked at other open source ticket systems. They all had interfaces that were overly complicated for what it needed to do. Submit a ticket, view a ticket, and manage a ticket. Why have 500(exaggeration) menus with 3000(another exaggeration) sub-menus within those 500 to work these simple tasks? This is tailored for a company with constant flow of feedback, suggestions, and bug reporting. All the users seem to greatly appreciate it compared to the last open source ticket system we had.

 

May I ask that you provide some of the lacking functionality you stated you weren't going to "list out". I would love to improve the system further.

 

Thank you for your feedback.

[TheFilmGod]

Oh, the GAY part of it. First, considering that part of the domain name is my actual name I don't see it on the level you see it. Second, the domain name is for my testing purposes and I guess I should have posted a note saying:

Please critique my web SITE and not my web DOMAIN.

because I thought that might have been part of the forum.

 

Do you have any other feedback besides a post not worth the disk space it is stored on?

 

Didn't think so, you probably didn't even look at the site.

 

Your domain is your name on the website - and whether or not it has "gay" in it is irrelevant. The domain name isn't catchy and doesn't relate to your site at all.

 

I'm giving my critique to you for free (as a typical user). If you don't like my critique than just ignore it. I mean it is you who will lose money and time on this project, not me.

[revraz]

He stated it was just for testing, and you hardly gave a critique of anything.

 

I've already ignored you and just found $5 on the floor.

 

 

I'm giving my critique to you for free (as a typical user). If you don't like my critique than just ignore it. I mean it is you who will lose money and time on this project, not me.

[448191]

I agree with ober that the design sucks (he didn't say that, but that's the excerpt).

 

But, I do see some potential. It may look horrid now, somehow I think it could look a 1000% better without too much effort.

 

 

[ober]

Your domain is your name on the website - and whether or not it has "gay" in it is irrelevant. The domain name isn't catchy and doesn't relate to your site at all.

 

I'm giving my critique to you for free (as a typical user). If you don't like my critique than just ignore it. I mean it is you who will lose money and time on this project, not me.

Cool it, TheFilmGod.  Either critique the website or get out of the thread.

[TheFilmGod]

1) Code does not validate

2) you fail to use css extensively, you still call "bgcolor, align, height" as inline css declarations

3) The site is too bland, absolutely no color

4) What is up with the "firefox icon" - I use FF, but users will hate you for telling them to switch their browser (As the web designer, it is your duty and responsibility to create cross-browser compatible browsers....)

5) Take out the system overview - do users really need to know the most recently registered user?

6) Use some icons - http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Library

7) Logo is distorted

You use tables for you code (bad idea)

9) There are way too many tabs; maybe you can cut down on the number of tabs you have? Combine some together?

[blackcell]

Ok, the design sucks. I thought it was pretty nifty to get around in and my boss pretty much coached the developement through feedback on what he wanted to see. Where are the rough spots? I have an alternate version that 100%s the lower frame to expand the working area to the width of the window with a constant javascript update so that you will only get one scroll bar.  I am not as good as I want to be with graphical interfaces and I have been forced to keep gui's very simple and dumb for the sake of speedy production. Therefore I lack in the knowledge of catchy graphical concepts. You guys are giving me "I don't like its but it has potential" and "It is lacking functionality" but make it a challenge instead of a pitfall and tell me what it needs.

 

Thanks again everybody for their input.

[blackcell]

1) Code does not validate

This should go here: http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,201145.0.html

2) you fail to use css extensively, you still call "bgcolor, align, height" as inline css declarations

This should go here: http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,201145.0.html

3) The site is too bland, absolutely no color

What colors do you suggest?

4) What is up with the "firefox icon" - I use FF, but users will hate you for telling them to switch their browser (As the web designer, it is your duty and responsibility to create cross-browser compatible browsers....)

Have you read anything above the past two posts?

5) Take out the system overview - do users really need to know the most recently registered user?

The forums you use have these types of things. Other ticket systems have these types of things... I will eventually find something better to put in the space.

6) Use some icons - http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Library

Thank you for the site I will look into it. Why not be original and make your own?

7) Logo is distorted

Read a few posts up.

Cool You use tables for you code (bad idea)

Cool to use tables? I have heard nothing bad but quite frankly out of 18+ simple programs and reports I have made there have been no complaints. Can I get a low down on the bad things called (tables)

9) There are way too many tabs; maybe you can cut down on the number of tabs you have? Combine some together?

To me they all seem independent and serve their purpose? I bet there would be no complaints if I took them out of tabs and strung them across the top in textual hyperlinks looking like this:

[Home][Help][search][Profile][My Messages][Calendar][Members][Rules][staff List][Logout]

 

[TravisJRyan]

As a key player in the project management at my office which is one of the largest PHP shops in the country. I can tell you that its pretty primitive in comparison to the open source options that are out there, if you want to be competitive, something like gForge with a better interface would be ideal and even better if it took queues from the open teams UI.

 

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: str_ireplace() in /home/bgaylor/public_html/Tickets/admin/panel_tickets_edit.php on line 998

 

When adding a new ticket, if you click admin, it smokes the work you started on and directs you into the default layout in a tiny screen

 

You have no max lengths on form elements. . .best practice

 

Solutions took a large amount of time to load a simple page and comment, perhaps a slow query?

 

User interaction paths seem all over the place, design a flow that is intuitive and apply it.

 

You have XHTML 1.0 Strict DOCTYPE and its not XHTML compliant, several small things that will render correctly because the browser helps you, but is not following the standards.

 

If you submitted this as open source now, I certainly wouldn't pick it up as a project to work on.  If you really would like to be humbled, go check out openteams for ideas on your next release.  This has a long way to go for anyone to consider picking it up in a professional environment.  Good luck to you.

 

P.S.  Gayloraid kinda reminds me of an image I made of my friend Sanjay once.

I'd change the name. . just my 2 cents

[blackcell]

You guys make me want to give up on college quit my job and go back to working in the oilfield or one of my previous young person hard labor jobs I had.

You guys give the problems with very few problems having possible corrective paths. I guess I should have started learning php and programming at the age of 13 to amount to something.

[TravisJRyan]

You guys make me want to give up on college quit my job and go back to working in the oilfield or one of my previous young person hard labor jobs I had.

You guys give the problems with very few problems having possible corrective paths. I guess I should have started learning php and programming at the age of 13 to amount to something.

 

Certainly didn't mean to discourage you in your goals, but the post I made was and example of some of the support tickets I will get from my QA department on any application we build.  Functionality is one thing, but flow and usability this day in age is a key element to your web application's success.

[blackcell]

I don't know I guess I have it completely keys to what we need in our IT department.

Tickets - Basic issues submitted from the end user or even reminders for yourself. Everything dealing with tickets editing/navigation is contained within the Tickets Tab. Outside links consist of mainly linking to the project it is attached to.

Projects - A larger scale ticket that can be used to group tickets. Flexibility allows for projects to be used as categories of tickets also. Tickets and Project use flexibility allows for something like creating a "bucket" or free PCs to deploy within the company where each ticket is a PC and has its specs listed. Activity can be used to track where the pc is deployed to and who to. The project will be the category.

Solutions - Used to document troubleshooting steps for moderate frequency issues. These can be categorized into existing categories or create a new on the fly.

 

 

[blackcell]

I have uploaded a newer version with some previously suggested changes.

[ober]

Hmm... now we're cooking but I still have a few suggestions:

 

1) Move the legend under the listings.  I've never seen a legend in the header of a listing and I think it looks out of place.

2) Highlight the tab that you're on.  I know it lists it in a big bar but I think you could get rid of that bar and just have the tabs if you change the color of the tab or change the text color of the tab to the active screen.

3) Get rid of the animated gifs on the "bugs" portion of the window.  It makes me feel like that is constantly updating (like an AJAX thing or something that never finishes loading).

4) Lose the scroll portions inside the various windows.  That's got to be the most annoying part of any system like this.  I have a scrollbar already... it's in my browser window.  Don't make me move my mouse over that area to scroll that little box.

5) My priorities window: the "last activity" column wordwraps when it's blank and just looks weird.  Either give that column more width or think of a different word.

6) Still doesn't span the width of the screen and there doesn't seem to be a very good reason that it doesn't.  I'm using 1280*1024 and 1600 * 1200.

7) System overview: add links to some of that information so I can look at the overview and drill right down to those areas.

Project creation: Add date selection ability (little popup calendar would be nice) and validate the dates for formatting.  During validation, the priority doesn't stay on what I selected.

9) Help section could use some help (haha):

Could not select database:

Access denied for user 'bgaylor_root'@'localhost' to database 'tickets'

 

 

That should keep you busy for a while.

[blackcell]

Ok I have updated the graphics a bit. Take a look now.

[blackcell]

New update, I should have taken care of most of the password autocomplete stuff. Still looking for a good method to process/display form data.

[blackcell]

May have fixed the vulnerability for xss. Found a few spots that needed the font size standardized also. Updated the in-program update log.