gabriel.massaki's sandbox: Groups.Drupal.org improve

Drupal Google Summer of Code Proposal

Who:
My name is Gabriel Massaki and I am studying Computer Science at the University of Campinas (Brazil).
My e-mail is "gabrielmwb at gmail.com" and my nickname on IRC "Gabriel_Massaki".

I live in Brazil, so it'll be "Winter of Code" for me, I study at night so during the day I will have time to work on the project.

Have you contributed to a open source project before?
No, but I always wanted to contribute, because I like the philosophy of open source projects.

Why do you want to do a project involving Drupal?
I really like webdevelopment and I’ve already played around with drupal. In the end of this year, I’ll start the development of a project for a biologist that will use drupal as the web platform.
By involving myself in this project, I’ll be able to help the community that [in the future] might help me.

Drupal is a really powerful tool for the web. And I want to make it better for me and everyone that uses it.

Overview:
I intend to improve the Groups.drupal.org UI for a better user-experience so that the drupal community may integrate in a better way. And also propose some fixes to correct the bugs when using the messaging/notification system.

Description:
For the UI improvement I’ll need to talk to the community and propose some modifications. But the opinion of the Groups.Drupal.org users will be my main guide. I intend to show previews every other week and post a “Demo” mode so that the community can tell me what they think and what they’d like to be changed.

For the bug-fixing part, I’ll need to talk to my mentor and see which bugs are critical and need to be fixed first. By doing that, I’ll create a priority list that I’ll post at drupal groups, so that everyone knows what will be fixed and I’ll be open for new suggestions.

Schedule:
May 23 - June 5: Get familiarized with Groups.Drupal code and start sketching the UI modifications.

June 6 - June 12: Finish the first sketches and upload a “demo” after these sketches and ask for the community’s opinion.

June 13 - June 26: Get the response from the community and start a new sketch, correcting what didn’t please the average people in the community. Finish up this sketch and build a final “demo” version.

June 27 - July 3: Start reviewing the Messaging/Notification System and build a priority list. Post that list to the community.

July 4 - July 10: Propose and implement solutions for fixing the bugs found.

July 11 - July 17: Start testing of the implemented fixes. Build a “bugs-found” list that will need to be corrected.

July 18 - July 24: Correct the bugs found after the testing period.

July 25 - July 31: Continue fixing bugs and updating the drupal community about the changes that are being made.

August 1 - August 14: Write doc and improve it. Perform some tests.

August 15 - August 22: Finish up the doc and testing. Get the drupal users to see what was done and receive feedback. And then give the project some final touches.

Mentors:
I don’t have one yet. If anyone is interested in mentoring my project please comment my idea.

Puzzle:
The variable $a must be set and it’s value should be 0(0 as an integer), “0”(0 as a string) or “”(as an empty string). This way, the comparison will be TRUE.