I want to demonstrate how much progress has been made on our project for the client. We have a number of milestones and multiple features for each milestone. What I think would work is if we could assign colors for each milestone/feature based on progress, and make this viewable online.
Any ideas?
Take a look at Team Foundation Server from MS. It's expensive but it allows you to create a project portal (via SharePoint) that you can allow customers to see all kinds of metrics on the project.
This probably depends a lot on the audience. (How technical.. how much detail) Big milestones seems pretty simple to show on a simple timeline.
If you are just trying to show some simple graphical representation you could just create a gantt chart. You wouldn't even need to use an app. You could make it in a graphics program.
I used to keep a project wiki page that was ordered by date so that people would see my weekly progress on stuff, but I think that might be a bit more detailed than you are looking for.
I am sure most of the project management applications will output HTML for you though. You just have to publish them though.
Why not show him the software instead of statistics?
If you build the software in vertical slices, instead of horizontal slices, you'll have pieces of most of the components to see him and he'll have the opportunity to say, "Oh, that's not what I meant." You'll be in a much better situation to really discuss progress and features.
Well, I have one although I don't know if it would be the best fit for a client. I have used it internally. Basically what we did was a classic burn down chart in Google Doc's spreadsheet application.
This only really works if the entire team logs in and records how much time remains for each task. I have always seen this used internally, but I think a client can be made to understand it. The benefit is even if they don't understand why the database thing has so much time and separate items, they do understand that the line moved down a lot and will see that as "the progress".
Note that one downside is that this will flag you being behind schedule very quickly. If you have a client that would freak out every time you stray over the ideal this could be a very bad idea.
Trac http://trac.edgewall.org/ is my goto app for development tracking. By combining issue tracking, milestone tracking, and source tracking along with svn integration and a wiki it provides a view of what you are planning to do, what has been done and status of the software.