25 Oct 2008

Feature Creep

Written by Brian Teeman

Keep It Simple Stupid

Where do you stop. You've got a great idea for an extension but at what point do you say enough is enough and release. There has to be a point in the development of an extension where adding additional features actualy detracts from the effectiveness of the extension rather than adding to it.

The featuritis curve

The best extension is one that does the job it was initialy designed more and nothing else.

If I wanted to add social bookmarking to the content I would have installed a specialised social bookmarking extension - it will probably handle it far better than your photo galery and offer more specific features.

Concentrate on making your extension do what it was designed for and not in making a "one size fits all" extension that will probaby fail to satisfy anyone's needs but your own.

(Apologies to the author of this image for not crediting you but I can't remember where I found this image)

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About Brian Teeman

  • As a co-founder of Joomla! and OpenSourceMatters Inc I've never been known to be lacking an opinion or being too afraid to express it.

    Despite what some people might think I'm a shy and modest man who doesnt like to blow his own trumpet or boast about achievements.

    But it seems that no blog exists without an "About" page so rather than talk about what an amazingly great guy I am and list all the things I've achieved (and failed at) in life from my Cycling Proficiency Test in 1976 to winning an award for the "UK Individual Contribution to Open / Source" in 2005 here are some links.

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