IssueTrackerProduct

The auto save feature that has been planned for a long time has finally begun materialising. It only works for the Add Issue page yet but it's a very promising start.

The autosave feature is a Javascript dependent one. It relies on an AJAX lib that is called sack. By Javascript dependent I don't mean that you need to have a Javascript compliant browser to add issues and use the issuetracker but you'll need one if you want to use the autosaver. A clear case of the bells & whistles which means that it's additionally nice if it works but not a showstopper if it doesn't.

So far I've only done this in a development issuetracker instance and only on the Add Issue page. Once all or any bugs on the Add Issue page have been cleared, this feature will be featured on the Quick Add Issue page and any followup form.

Enough talking, to test this in action visit the Autosaving Issue Tracker and start entering a new issue. Then to pretend something very common, namely that the browser crashes, you kill the browser without clicking any other buttons. Once you've done that you can open the page again and return to the Add Issue page. You will then see your autosaved input in the Drafts list in the top right hand corner. It'll say (autosave) if it's in the Drafts list because it was autosaved, as opposed to saved with the "Save Draft" button.

But the autosave happens only every 8 seconds. That means that at worst it might take a whole 8 seconds until the next autosave.

Do note that there is virtually nothing that indicates this feature functioning for you. Having system messages (eg. the status bar) was considered but then totally scrapped. Would the user really care? Hell no! But, just like Emacs or Microsoft Word it does tell the story of autosaving when you recover it.

At the time of writing, this doesn't work in Opera which isn't the end of the world. Unfortunately, at the moment it pops up an annoying javascript alert about this. There seems to be a bug in the sack lib, because the use of it actually does set to surpress these error messages.