launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Michael Nelson <michael.nelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Max Bowsher wrote:
> Michael Nelson wrote:
>> Hi Launchpad users and developers!
>>
>> I'm starting the process of updating some soyuz-pages to the new
>> 3.0-style designs, and I got stuck on the PPA index page - mainly
>> because of the huge opportunity we have to improve the page.
>>
>> I've outlined the main problem (as I see it) and have included a mock of
>> one possible solution at:
>>
>> https://dev.launchpad.net/VersionThreeDotO/Soyuz/PPAUI
>>
>> If you use the PPA page as a user or developer, I'd love to get your
>> feedback and suggestions as well as your own mocks if you have time.
>>
>> Feel free to update the wiki page directly, but for the conversation,
>> please reply here too with a summary of your thoughts.
> 
> I like most of this, but do have a few suggested changes:

Thanks for the feedback Max!

> 
> 1. Even with a "user" hat on, I still want to see at a glance what
> packages a PPA can offer me *and* I want to see what packages I may not
> want, but may be letting myself in for by adding the PPA to my sources.
> I don't think "recent" or "most popular" should be the only determining
> factor for display on the front page - I'd prefer full information on
> which source package names exist in which series be visible.

As a technical user, 'recent' and 'most popular' should definitely not
be the only determining factor for adding a PPA to your sources, and in
this case, would the option I mentioned on the wiki page deal with that
concern? :

"Option 1: To smooth the transition, we could keep the list of source
packages at the bottom of the page, but any interaction with it (ie.
filtering or paginating) will then use the +ppa/ppa_name/packages url to
handle the request."

(note: I don't think we can display all packages in one hit - as there
could be hundreds, but allowing people to browse the packages directly
from the front page is probably a good idea, as you suggested).

My second thought here is, I wonder if there is a way to summarize the
information required for you (well, users who are less advanced) to make
that judgment. For example, we could encourage small focused PPAs by
displaying "This PPA currently updates only the following packages on
your Ubuntu 9.10 system: firefox-3.5."  when the archive has < 5
packages or something (auto detecting the distroseries)?

> 
> 
> 2. A common use case is to do simultaneous uploads for all supported
> series - this would overflow the proposed "recent uploads" section with
> various series of a single source package name, in a single batch of
> uploading. Options to fix this include restricting the "3 most X
> packages" lists to a single series (autodetected with changeable
> dropdown, as exists for the sources.list lines), or (potentially tricky)
> batching uploads for the same source package name that occur within an
> hour or so of each other.

Good point. I'm guessing we'd only include packages that were
successfully built in the "most recently uploaded packages" (perhaps
"Latest package updates" would be better?) But I think it would need to
be grouped somehow. Hmm. "gnome-panel in Ubuntu Gutsy and Karmic -
uploaded 3 days ago". I think we could grab the latest three unique
source package names uploaded.

> 
> 
> 3. It would be really nice if the owner's description field could make
> use of a severely restricted subset of HTML or wiki-esque markup - e.g.
> bold, italic, font-size.

Yes, generally for description fields across LP...

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/soyuz/+bug/392123

That would be great to do soon, the spec linked from there talks about
moin, but ReST would be just a nice.


> 
> 
> Max.
> 


-- 
Michael