The Feedback Loop : Connect 2.3

Connect 2.3 Alpha 2

Cyclometh — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 01:50:00 GMT

Hi folks- we've just completed deployment of the latest Connect 2.3 bits to http://connectbeta.microsoft.com. Please take a look and see what you think. There are a few changes you may find nice, but keep in mind that this is VERY early in the process, so much of what you're seeing will change or be enhanced by the time we go live with it. So don't think that anything is cast in stone, especially with respect to some of the AJAX stuff on the Feedback page.

If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, please file them at http://connect.microsoft.com/Connect/feedback (the main site, as feedback filed on the beta site doesn't go anywhere). We appreciate and listen to all your feedback, bug reports and suggestions.

In fact, I have almost 100 bugs, suggestions, feature requests, and other items on my plate, many of which are directly from you folks. So keep them coming.

AJAX and ConnectBeta

Here's what I can tell you about the AJAX support on ConnectBeta: It's in the early stages yet. Keep in mind that much of what we're doing right now is validating that AJAX works properly, establishing what we can accomplish given our site's architecture and target browser requirements. So much of what you'll see isn't as nice looking as we'll have it. You're looking at what is essentially proof of concept stuff in some cases, experimental in others. We elected to go forward with some unpolished stuff, and in a couple of cases, very unpolished, so you'd have an opportunity to get a glimpse of what we're up to.

Here's the (probably not all-inclusive) list of items I know about for AJAX in Connect:

The summary panels appear over the other content and block it until it has faded out, which kind of sucks. This is going to change significantly; modifcations to the location and appearance of the summary panel as well as changes to the way it pops up are in the works. This was mostly to demonstrate different ways of showing the summary data, and was never going to be the final look.
Adding or removing items from your watchlist using the summary display will only update your watchlist if there's already items in it. If you run into this, simply refresh the page to see your new watchlist contents, but if you have items in your watchlist it should work.
Adding or removing items from your watchlist can cause the page layout to reflow if the list becomes long or short.
The "add/remove from watchlist" option on the summary control appears whether you're signed in or not, but if you're not signed in, just shows a pipe (|) character.
Fadein/fadeout isn't consistent all the time. Sometimes a panel will be left floating.
Hovering over a feedback link on the overview page can cause the page layout to flow differently, but the panel remains in its original location.
When you "rate" an item by selecting a particular star, it may take a moment to commit your rating, and until it does moving the mouse away causes it to go back to the previous state, and then it will update. This will be corrected by "locking" the item to the selected rating until the rating selection is committed.

As you can see, the current state is pretty early in the process. Over the next few weeks I'll be working on a number of things to improve this experience, and I think you'll be very pleased. The rest of the dev team is very excited about what AJAX brings to the table.

Happy New Year from Connect

Cyclometh — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 21:21:00 GMT

Howdy folks- I hope your holiday season was a good one! On behalf on the Connect team, best wishes for 2007!

The Connect team has been working hard on the next version of Connect- 2.3. I've been spending a lot of time writing specifications and there's some pretty cool stuff coming, including some AJAX components. I've also spent some time prototyping on some nifty features and I hope to show you some of those in the next few weeks. As we shake out the schedule I'll let you know where we stand there.

I had the opportunity to take my first vacation in my entire career also, which is one reason I haven't been around much of late. Now that we're through the holidays and thing are picking back up, I'm getting excited about the next steps for Connect.

Connect 2.3 and the My Participation page- your input needed

Cyclometh — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:57:00 GMT

Hey folks. Our Community PM, Bradley Vavra, is spinning up the process for a revamp of the My Participation and Available Connections pages on the Connect site. We already have a number of bugs and suggestions filed against those pages, but I'd like to give you an opportunity to comment and provide any specific suggestions or requests you might have. If you've already filed a bug or suggestion, we're going to be adding that to the pile for consideration as well, and feel free to cite any existing bugs or suggestions.

Here's what we've got as a starting point for requirements. This is very much preliminary, and subject to much change, your mileage may vary, no purchase necessary, and other disclaimers apply. ;) We're going to be having some internal discussions soon and I'd like to come to the table with some of your thoughts.

From Bradley:

Here are the requirements for those pages that I have documented so far:

My Participation

· Users can add a site to their “favorites” that show up on their participation page (and can remove them)

· Users can remove a site/program from their participation page

· Users can sort & filter the entries on the participation page

· Display list (or just qty) of new articles, bugs, surveys, files, etc for each site since last login

· Clicking on the program name will take the user to a program home page

Available Connections

· Users can sort & filter the entries on the available connections page

· Programs are listed in association with their Site

· Users can search through Site/Program descriptions

As I noted above, this isn't exhaustive and doesn't include all the feedback we've received, but we're trying to identify a set of requirements we can accomplish in the Connect 2.3 release, which is scheduled for the first quarter of 2007. Some items may be added to this list, others removed, and so on.

A couple of things not on this list that are slated for 2.3 is removing Declined and Rejected programs from the list (I have a "rejected" on my page that's been there since before Connect officially launched!) and navigation/pagination improvements. Also, the terms "Site", "Connection" and "Program" are known to be somewhat vague and confusing to some users, so we can expect some changes in that regard as well.

I'm looking for suggestions on what you'd like to see added or improved. What would you like to see done to the My Participation and Available Connections pages?