The Snitcher is a new Open Source project we just made available at Kenai. It comes to help us solving a problem that occurs a lot occurs a lot to us: allowing users to easily submit bug reports. It is still not feature complete, but it is already possible for users to report bugs through the tool.

The way it works is very simple. You just have to deploy the application in any java application server. For now, there is just two boring steps that need to be done. The domain variable in the snitcher-loader.js script file, and the URL for the css file and for the form action in the snitcher.jsp file must be set to the correct values.

Then you add a simple <script> tag in your page, as follows:

<script type="text/javascript"
    src="{domain}/Snitcher/snitcher-loader.js">
</script>

Here, {domain} is the domain under which the application was deployed. This will load a small script, which will load Snitcher itself the first time a page try to display it.

To display the reporting window, you can attach a javascript function loaded in the previous script called toggleSnitcherOpen(element) to any onclick event you want, where element is the place in the page you want to store Snitcher – you can use something as simple as body).

After loading, this is how Snitcher should look (as of now, it is likely to change in the future):

snitcher

Now, there is still a lot of work to be done. If you are interested in helping out, or just on keeping an eye on how the project goes, visit the project site at kenai.com/projects/snitcher. Also, take a look at the wiki for where exactly we are looking for help right now.

Finally, please let us know in the comments, e-mails or in the discussion list if you have any comments!