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ActiveCollab – An Accessibility Critique

Overall, ActiveCollab is a great project management application. The design is clean and straightforward, but I find that there is a bit too much emphasis on design over functionality for my taste.

I found a few features to be really cool, like the User Based API and the Quick Add.

Here are the critiques I had for the main sections of ActiveCollab.

People

It would be nice if the lists were smaller vertically as each user takes a considerable amount of space, which will make the page unmanageable when there are many users. It would also be nice if there was a live search feature for narrowing down users.

I did run into one problem in the “people” section of ActiveCollab.  I was I was not able to upload my logo. The error I got was simply “failed to create avatar” which really gave me no idea of how to fix it. Should I change the size? Do I need to change permissions? What should I do? Obviously, it would be nice if the error message was a little more detailed.

Projects

First off, I found the “projects” button in the main navigation to be a bit deceiving. When clicking on (or more appropriately, mousing over) the arrow I would expect a drop-down menu.  Yet, I end up with a modal window. I would suggest either converting this to a dropdown menu that is pre-populated with my projects (so I’m not waiting for an AJAX call to load), or just remove it. It may seem like something small, but it can be very counter-productive.

After navigating to the “Active Projects” section of the app, I noticed I have a shiny new set of tabs on the right hand side. This is a great sub-nav system in general, but there are a few flaws with the current implementation. First and foremost, the tab system itself should be a JavaScript system so I’m not waiting for another page to load. This should function as it does in the “Quick Add” modal window. Also, after clicking on the “options” button, I lose the navigation system completely. Rule of thumb: if it’s a tab, make sure it works like one. Otherwise, just make it a button or link.

Calendar

I like the layout of the calendar, but I would like to see some functionality here. The ability to add tasks directly to the calendar would be ideal, or at least a link to add a new task. I’m really sort of “stuck” here because the only thing I’m able to do is view the calendar.

Now that we’re past the sections themselves, I found that one of the most important aspects of any project, “Tasks”, are essentially nowhere to be found (I finally found them after looking under “Pages”) and are one of the most difficult things to add. While it’s a novel idea to have different pages of tasks, it is very confusing. I can’t even add tasks from the “Quick Add” modal. This is the one aspect of ActiveCollab that I feel needs to be revamped. It could be something as simple as changing the “Pages” tab to “Tasks”.

Here are a few other things that I noticed while using the app:

• When adding users to tasks, eliminate the modal and put the select boxes right there on the page. It just takes too long to wait for and then use the modal.
• Use threaded comments, they use less vertical space.
• I would like to be able to sort projects by importance, rather than by name
• The projects tab in the main navigation should be the first button as it’s the main focus of the app
• There is too much page loading overall, which really slows down the app. Remember that the app should be something that enables me to manage my projects efficiently, not another project I have to manage.
• Confirmations should fade out after a certain amount of time.
• The print page is excellent, but should be a modal window. After trying to navigate away from the print preview I hit the “back” button, which took me to the wrong place completely.

You have to understand that this is how accessibility people think.  We strive to make good things better and great things exceptional.  ActiveCollab is a great application overall, and I feel like the developers have really spent some time putting the app together. It’s good to see a decent new competitor in the project management market.

Check out ActiveCollab’s website here.

http://www.activecollab.com/

Accessibility Rating: 4.5 out of 5!

Full Reviews

• Jacob Haug (Multimedia Specialist)
• Mark Poppen (Designer)
• Jason Stanley (Developer)
• Rich Komatz (Accessibility Professional)
• Luke Dingle (Client Prospective)

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About The Author

Richard Komatz