jrogelstad's blog

For several years now we've had a very large widget called the "Contact Cluster" that is used as the common interface to edit and search for contacts. 

This device was implemented when CRM was introduced into xTuple in version 2.0.  The idea was to preserve the previous look and feel of contact information which had been stored locally on each table but, with the introduction of CRM, was being normalized into a single CRM contacts table.  It made sense in theory because people say they don't like jumping around to a new screen every time they need to enter new information and we try when we can to reduce upgrade surprises by maintaining some consistency in the interface.  

In practice however, this strategy has been less than optimal.  Read more »

It's clear from the responses to my U and I Need to Talk post a couple months ago that the number one complaint of the community is keyboard navigation issues.  This is actually a surprising revelation because having started out on character based systems myself I understand the benefits of keyboard navigation and spent years trying to convince windows users to work that way.  All those efforts were for naught.  No one ever took that advice and a couple years ago I threw my hands up on that cause. Now here I am getting an avalanche of feedback that users want better keyboard navigation on our application!

I'd like to make some progress on this issue, but we need your help.  Here's how: Read more »

If you've attempted any development on xTuple using scripting then you've probably found the debugging routine a bit tedious, to say the least. It has been mostly a manual process of reviewing the command line console for uncaught exceptions, and inserting try/catch blocks and print statements in your code to track down otherwise silent bugs. If you're running on Windows, it's all the worse because print statements don't print anywhere useful, leaving would-be Windows script developers almost completely in the dark.

Version 3.4.0 of xTuple (currently in beta release) exposes Qt's powerful script debugging engine that suddenly brings all those nasty little bugs into the light. It provides a graphical IDE style interface that highlights uncaught exceptions and allows you to step through code execution.

  Read more »

The decision making process for selecting an ERP system is often reliant on the needs of Accounting and Operations people whose primary concern is functionality.   Yet I.T. Administrators bear the burden of deploying the application and anything that goes wrong seems to fall on their shoulders.  Ask any I.T. person what they want in a business system and the answer is “Something that is easy as possible to maintain.”  For this reason I.T. Managers often assume that what would be easiest is a browser-based solution because they don't have to install anything on their users' client machines.  Think again.  xTuple's zero footprint solution is easier than that. Read more »

xTuple is proud to announce our first annual xTuple Bug Derby.

From July 13th to July 21st we will be obsessively fixated on resolving as many bugs as possible for the 3.3 release and we are inviting the greater xTuple community to join in. 

There will be prizes for participating contributors.  Anyone who submits code to resolve 3 or more bugs will receive an xTuple Bug Derby T-Shirt.  The highest contributor outside xTuple that submits code to resolve 10 or more bugs will win a Dell Netbook.  All participants will be publicly credited for their contributions. Read more »