At least it should be possible to collapse the filter settings (so you only see the Search-input line, the filter selector and a button to expand the filter settings)

We love the new search features, however having to click to another page to be able to edit the search is a bit cumbersome and our users are not in favor of it.

It would be great to be able to make this dynamic HTML where the editable section was hidden and could be expanded quickly without needing to do a round trip to the server.

I think the reason to do the new search interface was to reduce the amount of data transfered everytime you load view_all_bug_page.php. If you only have a few users I guess it was OK with the old one, but when reaching a certain amount you don't want to load that each time.

Don't misunderstand me, I think the new design is really useful, but when we define some more complex filtersettings, you really lose A LOT of screen space just for displaying what the specific filter settings are. This makes Mantis look very complicated to unexperienced users.

For a "normal" user it should be sufficient to see the name of the active filter profile. I would think our users (and myself) only in rare cases want to edit them.

Therefore I'd need a way to "collapse" (=hide away) the detailed filter settings.

I wonder if there's a viable way to have it cache some of the long lists locally wiht XML. The main problem would be with keeping it synched, I imagine. That way you wouldn't need to send down all the names each page load

edited on: 07-16-04 11:07

I really like the "Filter Profile" selector idea from ralfiii. One built in for "All". Another "Custom" that presents the filter controls like in version 0.18.3. Then "Manager" and/or personally created, pre-defined filters.

edited on: 07-16-04 11:01

Well, hiding the big filter table should be pretty easy. Just encase it with a div, and use a little javascript to control showing/hiding it. But, you'd problably just want to hide everything BUT the search field... And since they are in the same table, that could get sort of tricky.

I've discussed this with my other team members and what we have come up with is the following:

Have the old style way of doing filters as the default. It allows for quick searches. In addition to the old options, it would have the drop down for the preset filters. There would be links to be able to get to the custom filter screen where you could set and save the filters as it is now, as well as a link to the advanced filters.

We definitely don't want to lose the abilities of the filters now and the advanced filters, however, while some of our users are computer saavy, others are being weened from spreadsheets and anything they have to click is "scary" or "confusing" to them (I wish I were joking).

I have added in 0.19.0a2, a way where the filter can be collapsed to just the row which has the free text search + resetting or loading of existing filters. This will solve the problem of the new filter talking too much space.

This REALLY looks nice!

Now I only would need something that is stable enough for production-use, and I (and our reporters/developers) would be VERY happy.
When would you expect the next stable build to be produced?

edited on: 07-19-04 08:03

I am hoping to release 0.19.0rc1 followed by 0.19.0. So I would say that 0.19.0 should be released by end of August.