Awesome Defined

Wow.  Trac just impresses me more each day.

Today, it’s the peer review plugin.

If you looked up the definition of awesome in the dictionary, I’m almost positive that you’d find this mentioned somewhere in the entry.

It’s a component that plugs into Trac and allows you to start peer reviews on code blocks in your repository.  Users assigned to the peer review can view the source code in the browser and make comments on particular lines of code.  There’s also  a pass/fail mechanism to vote on how to proceed with the code.  The truly badass part about it is the GUI implementation.

Here’s a screenshot of it in action:

If this isn’t the definition of awesome, I just don’t know what is.

Great use of AJAX.  I did something similar for a different app I wrote recently:

I love this approach for web application design since it’s so much less intrusive than opening a new window and offers far better customization of the look and feel of the overall UI.  The big problem is that it’s probably not accessibility standards compliant; many screen readers will not properly pick up the change in the UI and the newly inserted HTML content.  If such domains are not a concern, then such a visual design pattern is definitely the way to go if you’re building a web based GUI which requires multiple subscreens.