In my quest to investigate a better way of tracking issues on software projects, I happened upon the Google Code Issue Tracker (I’m pretty sure that’s not the official name). I was looking to see if checkboxes and radio buttons disappearing in Google Chrome was a common issue, and a Google search landed me on an issue within the Chromium project. It’s hosted at code.google.com. What I noticed most was how simple the issue and the issue list were to understand and read.
Follow this link to see the issue: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=3543
What I like about this issue view:
- Everything you need to know about the issue is displayed in the top-left corner.
- The issue is basically a list of comments, starting with the problem reported.
- It seems like the issue tracker has a template that can be used to fill out the initial bug report.
- The UI is fairly simple. There are no complicated groups of settings or different areas to post the same information. The user can post a comment, star an issue to be notified of changes, or give feedback on others’ comments.
The overall list of issues for the Chromium project is fairly straightforward: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list
- It’s a list…that’s it. You can search, filter and star issues directly from this view. It doesn’t try to be something it’s not.
Overall, I like how the Google Code Issue Tracker is designed. It’s use of AJAX doesn’t seem to overblown. I don’t believe fade-in/fade-out AJAX effects are necessary for a issue tracker, and it is just more code to debug and maintain. It’s awesome that this issue tracker is available when someone hosts their code project on Google’s servers. I like that the links are readable; why isn’t that important for every issue tracker (really, anything that is list-like).
