per-project feature switch

[jeremyclarke]

Hey guys, I'm really excited about this project, you seem really serious which is great!

One thing that I as someone who mostly just wants activeCollab but open source am worried about is that all the extra features will slow down the program as a whole, or that the interface will get cluttered with potentially unnecessary office applications.

It would be really great to have the ability to choose which features (modules in the Drupal parlance) you want to be run on a project by project basis. So on project creation it would ask you what tools that project needs: Time keeping, task lists, spreadsheets. Then any that you don't select (and there can be buttons for 'select all' etc) would't show in the header bar of those projects. If you can turn them on later in the project settings, then it would be perfect, it might even speed things  up a bit (though I imagine they will be modular enough to not slow down too much). Goplan.info, a basecamp-like service offers a ton of features optionally like that, and it seems like the best way to satisfy those who want a full-on web office as well as those who just want one main tool from OpenGoo.

[conrado]

Hi jeremyclarke. Welcome, and thank you for the compliments.

Your concerns are not only legitimate, but fundamental for the success of this project.

If what you want is barely activeCollab but 100%, maybe ProjectPier is the project for you. We are already in touch, and hopefully both projects will work together. I didn't contribute much this past week since I am visiting California. It's just too much work (and fun) here. That leaves little time.

What we want to do with OpenGoo is a bit more ambitious, mashing together many Open Source apps, to get greater functionality (the "Web Office").

So one goal of OpenGoo, as a framework, is to have the ability to decide which featrues (apps) you will use. For example, for text editing, maybe you would like to use TinyMCE as the text editor, instead of FCKEditor, a full or a light version, a wiki engine, etc. The framework should let you make the choice (like linux packages).

Another goal is simplicity of the UI. I myself love wikis (dokuwiki in particular), and I find that I can document almost anything in one of those things. But wikis, as easy as they may seem to some, are way too difficult for most. That is why the UI should stay as clean as possible (as Google teaches us).

Since the system will usually run on a server, you shouldn't be concerned about performance (unless you plan on installing it on a 386 with 64MB RAM, which I wouldn't recommend). You won't need large chunks of memory on your client PC. That's the beauty of the AJAX Web (Web 2.0).