This is a very cynical comment. The work is open source, the entire process is transparent on GitHub. Help is given for free. I am not sure what more can I personally do to get things moving. People who are contributing are unfortunately not the ones spending time on the forum clarifying issues.
Contributions have to reach a certain threshold to be acceptable, that is decided not by polling, but by maintainers. Hard product decisions will have to be taken. There is full freedom to fork the project if you think there is a better governance model. As a long time maintainer, participating in such discussions is nothing but a drain of energy and such a huge disappointment.
No wonder open source maintainers face a burnout, no wonder I spend less and less time on this forum.
You have interesting points. I am sure you must have thought of the design before you announced the change. But at the same time it seems a lot of effort has gone into desk 2.0. It will definitely be good to interact and come up with what is best of both. In the thread for desk 2 I saw a interesting benchmark with an odoo fork. We can also learn things from others. It helps us to become better.
You have a good vision about the project, but others also want it to succeed. That’s why they are putting in effort to make it better. Belittling their effort or vision does not help. Discussing ideas help and I believe an open discussion about the requirements and proposed solution will help.
As far as the choosing the correct option is concerned, one way may be to put in demo sites for the three options and users can then give their feedback on both the design. We will have to include users who may not be technically saavy. They are the ones whom the new design would have to be sold as they are the one from whom the biggest push back will come.
Somebody made a suggestion in another thread that the new hierarchical sidebar be implemented. and have (possibly a more compacted) iconic floating toolbar when the user clicks on the “E” logo.
This might be a great compromise, even if it serves as a transitional tool between V11 and V13.
Forgive me and please accept that I mean no ill intent, nor question your motives or leadership to cause you consternation here!
You have my heartfelt respect and sincere admiration. I recognize and truly appreciate your Frappe team’s tireless and selfless work to sustain this venture for all to benefit.
My misunderstanding is what process sets the product direction, that is specifically how and what applies to nurture and evaluate contributions like Desk 2.0, to accept or reject these in the end.
To me it seems fair to say Frappe together with each product module maintainer group share this heavy lift work and serious decision responsibility.
The Foundation, presumably once it develops, will share in this critical role too, to evaluate and adjudicate, and provide support and relief, of some means to fairly resolve unenviable cases like this.
Any cynicism on my part I truly regret and stand corrected thanks.
Crap. I am on the fence. I like the new desk. It is clean and functional.
However, I really do like the icon option, and had gotten used to it.
I do believe that hierarchy based navigation is essential for Entrepeneurs, but some functions do require an additional Icon.
I will support getting rid of the desk and towards the new functional hierarchy approach. Then, perhaps users can build customized nav solutions on top if they are so inclined. I have found the hierarchical methods of Frappe quite useful in running my business.
@clarkej I have a lot of respect for you and your contributions, so please feel free to be real. We are not praise junkies or people who need an ego massage . We would rather hope to be treated fairly than go from one extreme to another.
Also please realize that expecting one person to review everything at this scale is putting too much pressure. While I agree I did not respond to the contribution (to be fair its only been a month), no one else reviewed it either. So if you are setting standards, please be fair rather than cynical.
Edit: The call for reviewers has been open since September 2017. Those who are feeling the pain of Desk 2.0 should strongly consider the other side.
If there is a mechanism to collect data of icon clicks vs Search-CTRL+G vs direct access to the doctypes, it will give a more objective idea based on existing user navigation preferences (Not Administrator/System Manager role).
This navigation data once reviewed, will allow to all of us to pitch in the responses.
As of now, I have read that usability / front desk “selling” to the users & management is assisted by the use of “similar to iPad” pitch when the first login and set of Desk icons is demoed.
The way and brute force that has been used is very disappointing. The message that goes is very loud and clear - We do not care about the community, their ideas or contribution.
Open source is not only opening up the source. It is also open discussion of ideas.
Maybe the current approach is the good way of doing things, maybe it is the best. But even then discussion helps to understand the use cases better and serve the end users better. I fail to understand the harm in doing it or the hurry to merge the changes.
I like the new desk quite a bit actually and was playing around with it in the latest development. It gives a lot of clarity from the end user perspective.
Maybe trying it out would convert some of the views expressed here.
Agree with this.
Dashboards for managers - To get overview of what’s going on at a glance.
and simple one click links to executives.
Data entry guy in a department would prefer just going to a doctype to add a new one, rather than drilling down to it.
I like the classic Desktop but I believe the core Frappe/ERPNext team should have the authority to make a decision like this. If they are shouldering the responsibility, they should have the power. And we should be patient. See how the change works for you for a few days before being put off.
I agree completely, but I also think that these are valid questions. If not voting, how are these decisions made? Perhaps if you could clarify that process, it would be easier for the community to know how to engage more effectively.
There is a big misconception here as I feel. Many of those who are against the changes feels that discuss forum is the place for decision making . Rushab has time and again stressed on the point that project maintainers take the final call on the direction of project. If someone feel that their opinion is not taken heed of and feel hurt in the community can always fork or work their way up to be a maintainer of any part of the project by commiting time and effort.
If we are not ready for both, lets enjoy the fruits of others labour and contribute as we see fit .
Its a privilege to be part of this community,not entitlement . Lets engage with the project wisely
I think what Rushab would love to tell us all is the Mark Shuttleworth(Ubuntu founder) comment in 2010
Thank @Savad_Ibrahim for sharing. Reproducing the content here:
We all make Ubuntu, but we do not all make all of it. In other words, we delegate well. We have a kernel team, and they make kernel decisions. You don’t get to make kernel decisions unless you’re in that kernel team. You can file bugs and comment, and engage, but you don’t get to second-guess their decisions. We have a security team. They get to make decisions about security. You don’t get to see a lot of what they see unless you’re on that team. We have processes to help make sure we’re doing a good job of delegation, but being an open community is not the same as saying everybody has a say in everything.
This is a difference between Ubuntu and several other community distributions. It may feel less democratic, but it’s more meritocratic, and most importantly it means (a) we should have the best people making any given decision, and (b) it’s worth investing your time to become the best person to make certain decisions, because you should have that competence recognised and rewarded with the freedom to make hard decisions and not get second-guessed all the time.
It’s fair comment that this was a big change, and landed without warning. There aren’t any good reasons for that, but it’s also true that no amount of warning would produce consensus about a decision like this.
This is a very important point. I’m not sure if your and @Savad_Ibrahim’s posts were intended as responses to mine, but I hope it’s clear that my question was not intended to doubt the second part of this quote. Rather, I was trying to emphasize the first.
I can vividly appreciate why you might find threads like this very frustrating. I don’t think that they come from a place of entitlement, however. Rather, I think it’s about the investments people have made, in time and money, in learning Frappe and ERPNext. They’re committed to the future of this platform you’ve built, and that’s a wonderful thing.
Ubuntu is not a democracy, nor should it be. Nevertheless, Canonical has put tremendous effort over the years into defining, refining, and communicating its process of decision making: see here, for example. Frappe/ERPNext is also not a democracy, and nor should it be either. I’m just not quite sure what kind of a thing it is instead. It’s not clear (to me at least) what the role of the community actually is.
Allowing for multiple options for users is the best way forward when there’s no agreement on what which option to go with. Users should generally have a switch somewhere in the settings.
Understandably, Frappe can not build everything, perhaps thats where the community comes in. So rather than keeping these as separate apps, why not just carry them along (especially for generally requested features) and only ensure they remain compatible with the latest changes (i.e they dont break)?
This way the Frappe can actively work on the features you’re supporting (while the community improves on their preferred features), and possibly compare how users are faring with the other options. Additional options could be insightful for improving supported features.
Facebook is doing something comparable:
"If the thing doesn’t work, then we add that to our documentation of all the lessons that we’ve learned over time. If it does work, then we can incorporate those small changes into the base of what Facebook is—that now everyone else who is trying to build an improvement, that’s the new baseline that they need to get against.”
If it generally takes 10 to 12 man hours each month to support a given desk UI and there are now 3 different UI available, then that means there is now potentially a 30 to 36 man hour investment every month REQUIRED just to keep pace.
That is a ridiculous requirement to place on an all volunteer team. If they essentially loose a whole week on man hours to maintain the UI then suddenly the ability to move the rest of the project forward is gravely impacted.
If I were on the UI team, I would come up with the simplest to maintain method of displaying the contents and set a standard for it. Then if anyone wants to make their own mouse trap, they can in knowing that the basic tenants of the UI groups work will always look and feel the same.
This would allow essentially a version proof way for others to invest time into developing any fancy mouse trap of an interface they may want and know it is not likely to break on the next version change of the core system.
Don’t get me wrong here… I absolutely LOVE the old icon desk!!
But I would much rather have volunteer developer time optimized so that I can pay for the interface that I want with a paid developer and know that it will likely continue towork on every subsequent version upgrade.
Just my opinion (and you know what they say about opinions)
. We would rather hope to be treated fairly than go from one extreme to another.
