I hope their aren't "pay $50 to get your post to the top of HN" services cropping up...
Maybe Flash-based gantt charts are the new hotness. ;-)
I ended up buying OmniPlan. But maybe that's not necessary anymore! Good luck to the team, it certainly looks useful and promising.
Site looks great though--wish you guys the best.
Although some HTML apps have this problem too, Flash is invariably laggy.
Flash doesn't work well on Linux, and many of the people in my world run Linux desktops. (And some won't run proprietary software on principle.)
The UI of Flash apps is always some homegrown awfulness that tries hard but is never as intuitive or responsive as native UI, and not even as good as web browser controls.
With Flash apps, printing usually doesn't work as you expect.
You can't save the page.
Flash apps don't really exist on the web. Even if you give each Flash app its own URL, that just means you re-download the same framework over and over again and then load the data.
It is cumbersome (for instance) to bookmark, or bookmark a particular view, or to link directly to other content, or to have a task expand to show an iframe of other content on the web. Some advanced HTML apps have similar difficulties in practice, but Flash apps have these issues in principle.
None of my existing web browser plugins work well with Flash content. For example, some people have spellcheck built into their browsers; now they can't use that when entering data. Even something as simple as cut and paste sometimes doesn't work quite right.
Interface lag when I drag things means I'm never going to use it - it can't compete against the many good desktop apps out there for me (plus, being flash means it wont work on my smartphone and iPad, which would have been a case for giving up on desktop apps) HTML/JS apps can have a ton of lag in sending things to the server before it gets frustrating, but dragging something and having it not move until a little bit later is too frustrating for me to use.
Take that with a grain of salt, though, I'm one of the people who get's extremely frustrated when having to use monitors not at their native resolutions (curse you DVDs on HD screens!)
Seems more like a feature you'd expect from a web-based project management software than something stand-alone. Is that your intention here? License the technology/tools to a service like that?
My corporate desktop does not include flash. Surely corporate users are part of the core audience for Gantt charts?
This can give people the confident that I can work on this on my own but when I send the file to somebody I can send them in a format that they know (also, good for trials, I will try it but what if I don't like it, I will have to redo all the stuff in my fave s/w again)
Collaborate with that exec who uses MS Project, and work from your netbook with this web app on the go.
2) If you collapse a rollup, it should still be draggable in time (left and right) and this should move all tasks within the rollup as one thing. The first task seems to have that functionality, but that's not intuitive.
3) Why can't you drag up and down since you have move up and move down?
4) On the date picker... DD, WW, MM, QQ, YY, ALL... but where is financial year? Or rather... custom iterations (fortnights, financial year, reporting segment, etc).
5) If I stuck this on a web page... could I give it data somehow? Could I provide it with some XML (since I note you allow save in that format) via JavaScript?
6) Colours... but yeah you're getting to that. The templates... they're kinda ugly but you've got the right idea and people will want to fit them to their own company scheme.
7) Your zoom buttons need a "Return to default".
8) It's got to be said... but you really need to allow XML import from MS Project files.
9) Keyboard shortcuts. Think of the power users... they should be able to create tasks with the simplicity of moving through Excel... this is what your competition is. So they need to tab to go right (rather than next active control in the tab order) and return should go down to the next row.
Those are some starters :)
I think you should be able to pan by dragging the chart header (the months/years).
Turn on alternating columns in the demo. Also use the square or round corners but not the one in the middle.
Also the task tree could stand to be widened a bit by default, it looks weird that in your demo you start off with a bunch of tasks only showing halfway.
Expand/Collapse should be a single button, the icon of which changes to indicate state.
When you do a snapshot it is not clear what the output file is going to be I just got a file called "chart" - is that an Image? Is it a MS Project file?
I'm not sure you want to use the full blow "File/Edit/Format/View/Help" menu. It blends in too much with the chrome of the browser window and you would probably be better served (in terms of UI/UX) by using standard icons for the most commonly used items. Also add contrast to that menu/toolbar (Still talking only about file/edit/etc...) so that it doesn't blend with browser chrome so much.
The units on the "Zoom tool" in the bottom right corner are not obvious to me (the P and W)
Otherwise its looking really good. Keep at it!
Just FYI, the snapshot is a .png screenshot and we can definitely clarify that better. There is also a saveAs which saves in our own format and ultimately will save to each of the various PM formats.
One minor issue: the horizontal zoom is a little counterintuitive.
The + button increases the number of weeks shown, effectively zooming out. The reverse for -.
Not a major issue, but it could throw someone off, especially because the vertical zoom behaves in a standard + to zoom in and - to zoom out fashion.
Screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/NTVhYzA0
From both marketing and SEO perspectives, I wouldn't limit the product overview to a video. You should add a page with screen shots, features, etc.
If you made this as Atlassian Confluence Plugin AND/OR Atlassian JIRA Plugin -> We'd ve more than willing to buy into your idea.
Basically, when the first "loader" filled up to 100% and I expected to see the page, I was a put off by the second unexpected loader.
