Mercury, the God of Profit

I've been told to use a new product that tracks defects for all the projects I'm involved in. I have used many such programs in the past, including trac and buzilla, mostly for open-source development. So I thought I knew what to expect.

This particular tool is called "Mercury Quality Center 9.0" and is easily one of the worst software turds I've seen in years. It's web-based so your experience starts just by visiting a URL - just don't try to use firefox or you'll get:

1. Click here to download Netscape 6 / Mozilla ActiveX plug-in (self-extract file)
2. Unzip downloaded plug-in into browser plug-in directory.
3. Restart the browser.

What? You gotta be kidding me. Get it through your thick skulls, people: ActiveX is the worst of both worlds! It has a) the limitations of the browser, b) ties to one platform and c) files that are installed on the client's side that you will need to deal with.

Anyway, I continue by opening Internet Explorer and visiting the same URL. Lights flash and dozens of progress bars appear, welcoming me to the age of the "downloadable component." Judging by the bars, it seems like about twenty components are being downloaded; and this even includes a thesaurus and a dictionary! How cool is that?

After downloading the whole thing, it auto-installs (well, at least you don't have to bother running an executable) and presents you with the usual login screen. Except that the screen doesn't look like a web app. It doesn't look like a Windows app, either (oh, no!) It has its very own set of poorly designed, custom controls. I confirm their lack of taste by moving a message box out of the IE window.

This app is obviously made by programmers with no input from real users. Programming a set of GUI controls is certainly fun but getting them to be useful is not; I'm willing to bet good money that's what went wrong with this Mercury thing; it's reeking of featuritis and single-mindedness.

After only a few seconds of use, I saw a major issue with the UI. The description field of each defect is used to (surprise surprise) describe how to reproduce the defect and comment on it. It's basically where you store 90% (or more) of the information a developer wants to see about each bug. It's also what everybody else spends the most time editing or looking at. It turns out that it's displayed in a tiny one tenth of a screen, with a resizable border that doesn't remember where it is after you close the window.

Seriously, people. You actually paid money for this? When Mercury runs you can almost hear its clunking noise. I know several free and libre programs that do the job much much better - next time, just google for bugzilla or trac.