This page contains ideas for fixes and improvements to the design and structure of WineHQ. This includes all of the sub-sites such as Bugzilla and the wiki.
For a list of actual writing tasks, see Web Content Tasks.
Across All Sites
- Ensure compliance to the latest (x)html spec.
- Single sign-on. This has been proposed in one form or another several times.
- One approach could be to move AppDB onto OpenID (Mediawiki, Bugzilla, and phpBB all have at least rudimentary support).
- Migrate over to a CMS or web-framework?
- Our web-services appear to be primarily PHP, with a good chunk of Perl mixed in (Bugzilla / the web-tools)
- A CMS like Drupal might be too limited for us
- Symfony or Laravel both look like promising candidates for a framework
WineHQ Itself
- Some sort of picture would look snazzy in the upper right of the About page
Test and Status Pages
- We dropped all of the old manually updated status reports, but it would be pretty cool (and helpful) if we could have more automated ones
- Examples we already have are API stats and translation progress
- Could we sick one or two of the Wine TestBot VMs, or do a rotation between distro images, to report build errors?
- Maybe another one could rotate through Static Analysis tools and our own scripts to check Code Hygiene?
- The existing Conformance Tests provide one good measure of runtime errors
- We could also mine Bugzilla and use open bugs as a second estimate of logic errors
- Use a scripted version of git shortlog by DLL to report current workers? (could be useful for new developers wondering who to contact about specific features)
- We could bring it all together into a fancy report page
- Highlight the DLLs with the most failed/missing tests and bugs as priority DLLs?
- We could possibly use an existing library for graphs & such (like D3.js?)
AppDB Improvements
A good place to start would be to fix some of the many open bugs for the AppDB
UI and Appearance
- AJAX-ify the AppDB to improve performance and give a smoother experience.
- A more dynamic UI might be nice (collapsible navigation bars for instance).
- Allow for displaying program icons next to programs in lists and search results?
- A customizable stats box on the main page that displays various database facts.
- Create a script to refresh the image montage on the front page.
- Make the rejection system friendlier?
- Store reviewers' comments on what needs improvement in a draft thread?
- Use softer words than "rejected" for instance
Update Questionnaire?
- Determine the rating rigorously from questionnaire?
Question | Answer | Restriction |
---|---|---|
Was the test/install done on a clean wine prefix? | No | Gold at best |
Does app need native dlls, registry changes, or other tweaks for all features to work? | Yes | Gold at best |
Were all features of the program tested and found to work? | No | Silver at best |
Does the application start? | No | Garbage |
Did you use any Third Party Applications? | Yes | Reject test report |
- If ratings are going to be calculated automatically based on questions, it would probably be better to scrap the "medal" system altogether and use a 10-point scale instead (1=can't be installed; 10=installs and runs perfectly out of the box).
- Other useful questions
- How did you install Wine? (distro package / winehq package / source / git)
Backend Stuff
- Allow for more cross-referencing.
- This could possibly eliminate a lot of effort-duplication
- Might also help users find relevant info stored with entries for another app and help users find info that.
- Support accessing application entries with short URLs.
- Add a page for browsing regressions.
- Replace application url field with a list of label/url pairs.
- Add some more queue states (such as 'pending' and 'deleted').
Admin & Email Features
- Create a user information page for admins
- Allow for more flexible administration and management of pages?
- Make improvements to the email notification system
- Create a mail-list for all public email notifications?
- Validate email addresses before accepting them (possibly require confirmation too?)
- Ability to email users selectively (e.g. based on keyword or subscription to new application submissions)
Bugzilla
- Open up more to allow for more thorough triage?
- Some improvements to the interface?
Forums
- Enable some kind of bot to crawl for useful info? (ambitious perhaps)
- Store it in structured form?