Hi,
I have just installed the beta version of Fortress 2 and I thought I would pass on my first impressions:

Shelve looks good; we have been eagerly awaiting this. However it does not seem to like it if you shelve a file with no changes and then try to un-shelve it, I get an error "Too many errors were encountered downloading files, Some files have not been updated"

I like the thumbnails of attachments, looks really good.

Now some things that are not so good:

Slow web client response especially when there are a large number of items on the screen (the old client was a lot faster)

Some page layout issues where text boxes flow outside of the bounding box and under the right hand menu if the text is too long to fit.

I like the little item icon that gives you a quick way to view an item referred to in the text but it seems to clutter up the table displays in open items and similar views.

Also I'm not keen on the quick edit menus at the bottom of the tables it just seems clunky, I would prefer to be able to turn them off in the preferences and the check boxes on every row that go with them.

Being able to edit queries in situ is nice, though I would like to be able to do relative dates, so I could create a query to show me all the things I have worked on in the last two months (say) without having to edit the date every time.

One other thing I am wondering about is are there anymore features to go into fortress 2 that aren’t included in this beta?

Anyway keep up the good work,
Rgrds Ian

Thanks, Ian for the detailed feedback.

We'll look at the empty file case. Thanks for the report

We're working on improving the performance of the web client. We have a look-and-feel redesign coming in the next beta, which will address speed and flow issues.

We don't currently have any plans to make an option to control the visibility of the quick-edit menu.

We are working on a few more changes for beta 2, which we hope to have out soon.

Hi,
Thanks for the response; one other thing that occurs to me is there still doesn't appear to be a way for a user to delete attachments. I quite often have to go into the database and delete an attachment when someone has attached some enormous BMP file rather than a nice compact PNG or JPG. Which also brings to mind that it would be great if we could configure the maximum upload size for attachments to work items and files in source control separately, that way I could allow large files in source control while preventing people from uploading huge files as attachments.

Rgrds Ian.

Hi, I've just installed beta 2 and thought I would update you on my findings:
The new web interface is way faster, well done.
I'm not sure I like the look of it as the red and different shades of grey look a bit odd but that is a minor issue. All the layout issues seem to have been fixed and the tool tip icon is handled better. Editing data items in place is nice.

There are still some issues:
It still complains where un-shelving a file with no changes, it does seem to do it, it just complains about it.

There still doesn't appear to be a way to do date relative queries (e.g. all items commented on by me in the last week).

I upgraded a backup of our current 1.1.4 database and it seems to have lost the used HTML flag for some of the comments that had HTML in them.

I really like the check-ins report but it strikes me that the period of time it reports over should be configurable and also when the comments contain an Item number you should be able to click on it to take you to the Item details.

Also there is still no way to delete an attachment; this would be really helpful when people attach huge BMP files rather than JPG or PNGs especialy as you still don't appear to be able to set the maximum upload limits separately for attachments and files in source control.
Rgrds Ian

Oh and one other thing, could the web client remember which projects you have collapsed on the item tracking page, we have several traking projects but only use on of them most of the time, it would be nice if we could colapse the others by default.
Rgrds Ian

The Projects At-A-Glance page should remember collapse state. You can see it in action at:

http://fortressbeta.sourcegear.com/Fort ... fault.aspx

I've just tried it again and yes it does, I think I must have confused the issue by loging into my test website from more than one machine but as the same user.
Rgrds Ian.

Ps. any thought on the other issues?

It still complains where un-shelving a file with no changes, it does seem to do it, it just complains about it.

With the latest build, it reports success.

There still doesn't appear to be a way to do date relative queries (e.g. all items commented on by me in the last week).

You've always been able to constrain queries by date on the query page (it's in the bottom). The only part of that sentence that you can't do is the "by me".

I upgraded a backup of our current 1.1.4 database and it seems to have lost the used HTML flag for some of the comments that had HTML in them.

We had a bug where HTML wasn't being honored when displaying items, but we have fixed it.

I really like the check-ins report but it strikes me that the period of time it reports over should be configurable and also when the comments contain an Item number you should be able to click on it to take you to the Item details.

You can tweak the time period for the Recent Checkins page by changing the &days=7 value in the URL.

Also there is still no way to delete an attachment; this would be really helpful when people attach huge BMP files rather than JPG or PNGs especialy as you still don't appear to be able to set the maximum upload limits separately for attachments and files in source control.

Alas, I don't have an answer for this one. We still lack the ability to delete attachments, and will in the final release as well.

Thanks for the reply, re. date relative queries, I think you are missing what I'm asking for; what I whant to be able to do is save a query that will work releative to the date of the day I run it on. So I can run a query over the last 7 days (for example) without having to modify the query every week.
Glad to hear the other things have be addressed but it is a shame that deleting attachments is still not in there, do you have any idea if it is likley to turn up in 2.0.1 or somthing?
Rgrds Ian