What are some advanced features you can add to any generic application?

Question

I've almost finished my Java p2p file sharing application and given that it's pretty simple, I would like to add some things to it. Some modules or something like that. As you may notice I'm a newbie and still learning, so I haven't quite figured out all the possibilities.

Can you please recommend me anything you would think I could use but that doesn't require too much time to get around.

Thanks. BTW I'm aware some of you could say my question is not precise, but I wish I could ask it better :)

Answer 1

Add what testing shows people need, not what you think would be gee-whiz.

Answer 2

Make it open source and let more people use it for free.. That helps you get reviews and new requirements from real users and help building a better software. Also making it open source will help you get new experienced developers working for the tool and you can learn more working with them.

Answer 3

This will probably be closed soon, but here are some easy things to add to make it looks more polished:

• Splash Screen
• Notification Icon (and hide the window)
• use native look and feel

Answer 4

To expand on Jherico's answer, make sure that you track everything that a user does so that you are able to compare meaningful data when you change something.

The more you track and the more you test the better your application can get. If you're not recording any usage data then any changes you do make are just shots in the dark and you'll never know if you are actually affecting the areas you want.

Answer 5

What is the user base of your application? If people other than you are using it, try to get feedback on the application, issues, etc. If you are still trying to get your application up to the point where other people will want to use it, try some of the following:

• The single biggest thing you can do is probably to improve the GUI. Take a look here for some resources on GUI design: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/514083/why-is-good-ui-design-so-hard-for-some-developers

• Make an installer for your software that adds start menu icons for the application and an uninstaller. Look here to get started: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/184060/java-application-installers

• Do compatibility testing with different OS/Java versions. Focus on stability and preventing application crashes.

Answer 6

Implement Google-like single-input-field search over all data.

This is sometimes hard to do (since many applications store their data in a RDBMS and those are not ideally suited for this search approach), but it often makes navigating your UI much, much easier for the user.

So instead of filling in a "firstname" field and a "name field" and a "city" field, the user simply types "John Doe New York" into a single field and gets the result he expects.

Lucene/Lucene.Net are one way to implement such a feature. I'm sure there are similar libraries for other languages.

Answer 7

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Adding features for the sake of having more features is just about the worst thing you can do to an application. Look at the recent move of Google: hiding everything but the logo, the search box and two buttons. That's the direction you should try taking, not deliberate feature creep.