launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

2009/8/7 Edwin Grubbs <edwin.grubbs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>>      * The change owner links in dangerous in the content, it should be
>>        included in the actions menu.
>
> This and other changes seem to be directly contrary to the old
> direction of showing edit links next to the item you are editing. Have
> there been users who edit things unknowingly with the edit icon in the
> content? Will each possible action only appear in the sidebar of a
> single page? I think the sidebar starts to be ignored when the user
> thinks that the list of actions never changes.

I'm a huge fan of edit-in-place and having the action next to the
thing it controls (the two are slightly different.)  It made my day
when Malone got this for bug titles.

However, I think we need to distinguish what you could call "edit"
actions from "change" actions.  Those are not great names but what I'm
getting at is: some things just change some text on the page and while
they may send mail or something they don't have very permanent or
disruptive effects: if you don't like it, you can just change it back.
 Other things, though they may also just be an update to a database
field, have wide-reaching or not-easily-reversible effects: changing
the owner or name of a team is one, changing the owner or name of a
branch (discussed yesterday in another thread) is another.  Things
that, once you set them, you may no longer have permission to change
are the extreme case.

I think we need to distinguish them at least mentally; I think we
probably need to distinguish them in the UI too.  Maybe the UI plan
already accommodates this?

If you agree - in what way should we distinguish them?  I don't think
putting the "change" link in a portlet is a great idea - it separates
it from the thing it controls which makes it hard to find without
really indicating it's different.  We could say "(change)" rather than
a yellow circle button.  I'd say generally they should go to a
separate dialog page that gives a one sentence description of the
impact - we do this in some places now and it works well.

> I assume you mean Recently Approved. I was confused for a minute.

Oh, that reminds me - Recently Approved should actually mean "recently
approved", not "the most recent N approved."  If there's nobody in the
last month, leave it out.

> I think there is some danger if we only show some RSS feeds inline,
> and users stop clicking on the browser's own RSS icon.

I wonder - do all browsers show RSS icons and all users have them set
up to work into the right reader?  It's probably a safe assumption for
most Launchpad users advanced enough to want a feed.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>