The description of backlog items or tests often need references to url for example.
A table could be also very useful to define the tests.
All that is already possible, but only through a copy/paste ...
by: Cyril L. | over a year ago | User Interface
Comments
Inline images are important too. A problem with images is that picture of text are not searchable, so not having them encourages people to describe things with words effectively. However there are times that an inline images are simply the most effective form of communication. Defects are a common place.
Not only that, but have you ever copied a link and pasted it into a story? When you hover over that story, every item available turns into a blue hyperlink. You simply have to hover over a different item to switch it back, but it's a bit odd. Also, when I do paste things in and then type more, sometimes it matches the font that I pasted in and sometimes it becomes a very small font that is difficult to read, and the difference is very annoying to look at
I agree with Doyle D., the ability to paste an image into a story or defect would really be benficial. As they used to say, "A picture is worth a thousand words".
Must have inline images!!! Especially for defects! There are far too many steps for the item writer and reader. And it isn't obvious which items even have images to go look at.
At a minimum, allow the use of rich text (bold, italics, underline, bullets...).
I want clickable links. When I past a link into the story description it turns into text and can't be clicked. Adding a link is way too complex.
As a VersionOne User, I want to be able to directly enter and edit the HTML code behind the Description field so that I can modify Web page URLs after editing the text. An example is the Wiki rich text editor in Microsoft sharePoint.
It would be nice not to have it have double line breaks.
Also, because our company creates graphics applications, we need to be able to embed pictures in our backlog items and defects; a picture is worth a thousand words.
Embedding WYSIWYG images is in dire need!
Inline images are sometimes worth 1000 words.
There's a very useful Firefox add-on called "It's All Text". https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4125
As far as I know, it only works for plain text areas, not rich edit boxes. It's All Text places a small "edit" button next to every text area. When clicked, the "edit" button copies any text you're writing out of the browser and opens your plain text editor of choice (i.e. Notepad, Notepad++, TextPad, UltraEdit). It creates a temporary text file for you to work in.
When you're done editing, you save the temp file and alt-tab back to the browser. The "It's All Text" plugin recognizes that the temp file has changed on disk, and updates the copy in the browser text area.
I love this tool, and it's especially useful for avoiding the dreaded "lost my work in the cloud" issue we're all complaining about.
But again, this only works in plain text boxes, not rich edit boxes. I'm not sure how you might enable easy switching between formatted, rich text and plain text without losing the formatting and without requiring everyone to edit their text in HTML. But for developers, perhaps they'd prefer to edit in the full-fledged text editor of their choice, even if it's in HTML.
Several other web tools I use (Drupal being one) have a "Disable Rich Text" link below the rich text editors which either converts the rich text to plain text, or just flips to HTML editing in a plain text area. Perhaps this is a way to get there for VersionOne.
What's wrong with adding a graphic as an attachment?
There is no worse editor in all of the internet than the one V1 provides for entering in description. The remove format button does nothing, there is no way to change font size, and the list goes on. This is one of those example where it is clear the people who write the software don't actually use the software.
We have many issues copying and pasting into the text editor and not being able to clear the formatting. A more general WYSIWYG editor would make things much easier for us. Javascript WYSIWYG editors (free and OS too) have come a long way in a short time to have to put up weak ones anymore.
V1 needs to have more formatting options, especially with font face, size, and color. For example, each time I paste data from excel into a test in V1, the font size changes so that it is no longer legible and in different sizes. It should paste exactly in the format that I have copied. Also, it would be nice to have the ability to add basic colors to text within V1 to make specific information stand out. Copy/pasting does not always work correctly in V1. I always end up having to copy and paste into notepad prior to pasting in V1. This is really time-consuming when you have alot of tests to enter. How many votes will we need to get better basic formatting options added to V1. We're currently at 60 votes!
also when you are editing a descripition you can't change the text size so it would be nice if you could do that; also when you copy and paste something from word it brings it in a weired large font size that you can't edit.
I think V1 needs to just invest in a better editor. That would solve many of these problems.
While I do wholeheartedly agree that the editor in V1 is not all that great, it does actually have a lot of features - bullets, numbered lists, bolding, italicizing, etc - that people are asking for. The problem is that it doesn't work like Word (all the time). Thats my biggest problem with the features, they feel unfamiliar (and buggy). Heck, the worst problem for my users is pasting from Word just doesn't work at all. (They use Word to set up the formatting how they like and how they want it to be displayed in V1. Of course, that ends up as a bad idea.)
For the images, I'd rather leave that out of the description. There is an attachments location where you can add images and give additional text. I use a lot of screenshots and definitely find that putting them everywhere can sometimes makes things less clear. Personally, I state my case concisely in the desciprion/actual results and then say see attached screenshot which can then go further into my explanation. I've seen both methods (inline vs attachment) and I personally like the attachment method just because it is usually easier for me to follow.
Need to have images insertable. attaching images just isn't efficient and it needs to be there inline with the text. Especially for bugs, being able to quickly grab a screenshot and paste it into the description of the bug is essential. This is supported in many other agile planning tools, even smaller scale ones like Target Process. Really needed.
This could all be solved with good integration with tools like confluence.. you could either have a page for each story/task/test etc or you could use markup within the wiki page to provide content for the story/task/test description etc...
VersionOne really needs to get on the ball and fix this. We are using this tool heavily and the flakiness of the text editor is a real pain. We have migrating test procedures from MS Word documents and need to preserve the formatting. Scrubbing everything through notepad to remove the formatting is not an option for us. This is the kind of quality issue that distinguishes a professional, enterprise level product and is sorely needed.
For those interested, you can throw HTML into the description field (and only that field, because it's a rich field) via the API. Play around if you have the time. I managed to get it to display a list of files in each changeset, and each filename links to the diff of the change for that file on a different server. It actually works quite well. I even managed to get it to link the svn username to the VersionOne member's page.
Far from ideal, though; and I've wasted a fair amount of time hacking in things that I absolutely cannot believe are already present.
V1, where are you on this? People have been screaming for two years!
Something like TinyMCE would be great.
I couldn't agree more that this is the very worst text editor anywhere. by far the poorest feature in V1.
This editor really needs sorting out! Just spent half an hour trying to add a few paragraphs with headings and they keep merging into a single block. Resorted to pasting in from Word in the end. VersionOne should be embaressed by the editor. We also use JIRA and that has an infintiely better editor.
It would be very helpful to have ability to insert tables and links on the editor text field.
Yes. This is really a sore spot.
Try using TinyMCE or some other available tool.
Much of our content is cut and paste from various sources. Then edited again. It looks like a real mess in V1.
I want it to be markdown with an immediate preview. Here is an immediate preview js library, please use it: https://code.google.com/p/pagedown/wiki/PageDown
Yes the editor is pretty bad. Any improvement would be welcome. The way it deals with tabs is particularly annoying.
Three years of complaints on the editor. Is anyone listening?
Ditto on all the comments above - need a better editor and specifically the ability to imbed an image in the description fields.
The editor is one of the worst I've ever seen. Almost every tool nowadays has a slick editor that allows you to do everything above. We just switched from Jira to VersionOne and everyone is complaining about the editor. PLEASE FIX THIS.
A numbered list in Chrome makes the font really small. Works fine in Firefox.
I'm having similar issues in Chrome where introducing bullets or single-line return (Shift+Enter) causes the text to get really small. Please look into improving or replacing the WYSIWIG editor.
It's faster/easier to add a bulleted list of Acceptance Criteria to a Story Description for sizing/estimation purposes and then only move them out to actual Tests when the Story is being planned in detail.
Copying To and From Word changes all settings like bullets, indents, line spacing and even fonts. This can make a small testcase look huge and in some case hard to understand. I see that this is probably a repeat of several of the other entries but was asked to submit anyway.
The editor shows backward indent actions from MS indent. Please could we make them universal? Decrease then Increase.
the editor is THE MOST frustrating thing about V1 it is so lame and hard to use
+1 for Markdown!!! The tinymce editor in the description is almost useless. There is no way to add links (aside from pasting the full url), inline code or code blocks! It would also be nice if there was some kind of code formatting enabled in Conversations and comments.
Most developers are already familiar with markdown's syntax, so I can't imagine anyone complaining if all of markdown's features are supported.
Github does a nice job of this:
http://screencast.com/t/HOg01RC1tITT
text editor / input in v1 is hugely frustrating which generally means I type up everything in an email and copy & paste into the tool. This usually results in a whole bundle of misformed text. Never seem to have this problem with other sites. please can you sort it. also suggest the ability to do auto-save as frequently I've lost data by accidentally clicking something in v1 that's resulted in the input screen being lost and another screen loaded over the top.
The application does use the TinyMCE component for rich text editing. Upgrades to TinyMCE over time have corrected many of the specific formatting issues raised in earlier comments. We will be looking at adding more of the functionality available. Tables along with paste options and source access (to correct any lingering issues from pasted content) are up at the top of that list.
The team is working on improving the experience around images and attachments in general. There will be some changes coming in that arena that may or may not include rich text itself.
In the longer run, we will consider a switch to markdown instead of HTML. Security is easier to enforce w/ markdown, but the WYSIWYG tools available are not yet at the same level of functionality. We expect that to change with time. Given that many of the users who write the descriptions in user stories are less technical, we are somewhat averse to forcing markdown syntax on them.
When will it be effective? I still have many of the bugs that are listed above. The text editor is really awful.
I agree with Jake F. above re: auto-save. I work with Firefox on a Macbook and the command + right arrow hotkey is how I reach the end of line in most editors. When I use it from a Description editor in VersionOne, a bad page loads, causing me to lose everything I just wrote. Even if the editor issues cannot yet be resolved, it would save a lot of frustration if the page kept its state when I go Back after this happens.
In regards to Markdown being hard for non-technical users --
Basecamp Classic has some basic formatting options as well as an option to switch to Markdown/HTML, which is what most of us here want (http://screencast.com/t/UleGkm6Q). So, the non-technical people could just use the "simple" version while the rest of us use the more robust one. Everyone wins :)
As of the Winter 2014 release, more features have been provided within the rich-text editor including: embedded images, tables, structured links, content headers, block formatting and more inline font styles.
For more information about the rich-text editor and Winter 2014 release, please see the release notes: https://community.versionone.com/Release-Notes-and-Downloads/Winter_2014_Release_Notes