Next month's update to the Joinup platform will improves the way software packages are presented and released. Package managers can now handle and release multiple versions of their application.
The new version (1.3.0) is expected to be introduced in the third week of May.
Most of the improvements are the result of the User Survey that was held in January. Only 45 users responded using the survey web form. Other users emailed suggestion using the feedback page on Joinup or posted requests on the site's forum. Taken together, all these responses led to several usability improvements, including making it easier to add pictures and tables in posts on the site.
The most requested improvement concerned the site's taxonomy (domain, country, language). This will be simplified. Second is the 'User account': users want a richer profile and more control over email subscriptions and privacy settings. These options will now be included.
Other users requested improvements to the introductory pages of their projects. In some cases, the default 'Welcome page' for a project contains little useful information. The easiest way to fix this is for project owners to link to the project's description page (/description) instead of link to the home page (/home).
Users also requested improvements to limit the number of emails sent automatically by the system. It is not yet certain if this is possible in version 1.3.0. Foreseen is a new default, where Joinup will only send one daily digest of notifications, if any. It will, in a future version, also be possible to unsubscribe from notifications via unsubscribe links in the e-mail messages.
Fixing bugs
Joinup 1.3.0 will improve the way search engine find information on the site, by keywords, by navigations, referrals and by improved metadata.
This update will also fix a number of bugs. For example, when logging in, users will no longer be redirected to 'My page', and will no longer be prompted multiple times when deleting documents.
The current version of Joinup, 1.2.0 was put in production on 9 March. New in that version are metrics that provide more insight in the software projects and semantic assets and show for example the geographic distribution of news.
These metrics will give project and community owners and users insight into the activity of their project or community. Statistics that can be displayed included for example the number of downloads per release. It is not yet possible to display metrics such as the number of lines of code in the source code repository per programming language.
Users that have suggestions for improving Joinup are invited to use the feedback form on the site. If users find bugs in the Joinup system, please send us a message.
More information:
Joinup User Survey January 2012: Results