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Phoenix Plan 1.1

This project plan was last revised 2006-02-23


Please send comments about this plan to the phoenix-dev@eclipse.org developer mailing list.


This document lays out the feature set for the next feature release of the Eclipse Phoenix project designated release 1.1.


Plans do not materialize out of nowhere, nor are they entirely static. To ensure the planning process is transparent and open to the entire Eclipse community, plans are posted in an embryonic form and then revised from time to time throughout the release cycle.


The first part of the plan deals with the important matters of release deliverables, release milestones and release-to-release compatibility. These are all things that need to be clear for any release, even if no features were to change.

The remainder of the plan consists of plan items for the projects under the Eclipse Phoenix project. Each plan item covers a feature that is to be added, or some aspect that is to be improved. Each plan item has its own entry in the Eclipse bugzilla database, with a title and a concise summary (usually a single paragraph) that explains the work item at a suitably high enough level so that everyone can readily understand what the work item is without having to understand the nitty-gritty detail.


Not all plan items represent the same amount of work; some may be quite large, others, quite small. Some plan items may involve work that is localized to a single subsystem; others may involve coordinated changes across several projects within the same top-level project; and others may involve coordination with other top-level projects. Although some plan items are for work that is more pressing that others, the plan items appear in no particular order.


With the previous release as the starting point, this is the plan for how we will enhance and improve it. Fixing bugs, improving test coverage, documentation, examples, performance tuning, usability, etc. are considered routine ongoing maintenance activities and are not included in this plan unless they would also involve a significant change to the API or feature set, or involve a significant amount of work. The intent of the plan is to account for all interesting feature work.


Release deliverables

The release deliverables are:

  • Source code release for Phoenix, available as versions tagged "R_110" in the Technology CVS repository.
  • Phoenix 1.1 usable on www.eclipse.org
  • Phoenix 1.1 downloadable samples from www.eclipse.org/phoenix


Release milestones

Release milestone occurring at roughly 2 week intervals exist to facilitate coarse-grained planning and staging. The milestones are:

  • 2006-02-17 - Milestone 1 (1.1 M1)
  • 2006-02-28 - Milestone 2 (1.1 M2) - feature freeze
  • 2006-03-03 - Release Candidate 1
  • 2006-03-08 - Release Candidate 2
  • 2006-03-09 - Release Candidate 3
  • 2006-03-10 - Release Candidate 4

The 1.1 release is targeted for 2005-03-10. All release deliverables will be available for use and download as soon as the release has been tested and validated in the target operating configurations listed below.


Target Operating Environments

In order to remain current, each release of an Eclipse project targets reasonably current versions of underlying operating environments and other Eclipse projects on which it depends.

The Phoenix 1.1 release depends on the following:

  • HTTP/1.1-compliant web browsers
  • CSS 2.0-compliant web browsers
  • JavaScript 1.4-compliant web-browsers
  • PHP 4.x and an HTTP/1.1 web server

The 1.1 release of Phoenix is designed to run on any configuration supporting the above components.

Phoenix 1.1 is tested and validated on the following reference platforms:

       Reference Platforms
Browser Window system
Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3+ X11
Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3+ Mac OS X
Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3+ Win32
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 Win32
Opera 8 Win32
Opera 8 X11
Lynx Text-based

Internationalization

The English strings for Phoenix are provided as the default resource bundles. Translations are not provided with this release.


Compatibility with Previous Releases

Compatibility of Release 1.1 with 1.0

Phoenix 1.1 should be entirely backward compatible with 1.0.

Compatibility of Release 1.1 with old website layout

Phoenix 1.1 should be compatible with existing website pages, with the following exception:

  • Download redirect dominates the browser 121503


Themes

The changes under consideration for the first release of Phoenix address a few major themes:

  • Accessibility and Quality - improve the accessibility and quality of the information needed by the community to perform their tasks; provide a single access point to that information; link and rationalize the information, thereby reducing duplication of information and removing access to out-of-date information
  • User Interaction- Establish bidirectional communication mechanisms to gather feedback from our community
  • Showcase - Create a showcase for members and the community

Each theme has a number of items; the relevant theme is identified for each committed, proposed, and deferred plan items.

The items listed reflect new features or areas where existing features will be significantly reworked. Numbers in parentheses link to bugzilla problem reports for that plan item.

The current status of each plan item is noted:

  • Committed plan item - A committed plan item is one that we have decided to address for the release.
  • Proposed plan item - A proposed plan item is one that we are considering addressing for the release. Although we are actively investigating it, we are not yet in a position to commit to it, or to say that we won't be able to address it. After due consideration, a proposal will either be committed or deferred.
  • Deferred plan item - A reasonable proposal that will not make it in to this release for some reason is marked as deferred with a brief note as to why it was deferred. Deferred plan items may resurface as committed plan items at a later point


Committed Items

  • Menus. Elaborate an acessible and simple menu structure for projects (125276, 125325) [Theme: Accessibility]
  • Simple Polling software. Implement an infrastructure to enable polling (120884) [Theme: User Interaction]
  • Screenshots. Provide screenshots to stimulate visitor interest. (12669 [Theme: Showcase]
  • Article rating and sorting. It should be possible to see which articles and tutorials have been viewed the most, and which have been rated the highest, and to be able to sort the article list on this (in addition to date, topic, number of comments, type, etc.).. This could and should be extended to be used throughout Phoenix (87782 [Theme: User Interaction]
  • Consistent look across the site. Pages should have same look as the rest of the website (125497) [Theme: Accessibility]
  • Printable website pages. Users should be able to print website content without the extraneous graphical elements (87912) [Theme: Accessibility]


Proposed Items

Deferred Items

  • Reference & Support. A centralized location for Reference & Support was proposed for Phoenix 1.0, but was never delivered. (121285) [Theme: Accessibility]

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