launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Michael Nelson <michael.nelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Martin,

I'm just in the process of what was meant to be a straight-forward
2.0->3.0 update for the builder index page in Launchpad.

You can see a before/after shot here:
http://people.canonical.com/~michaeln/3-0-builder-mechanical/0-builder-index.png

Although the first issue is specific to the builder-index page, the
second one might be relevant to others who are doing 'mechanical'
updates to templates.

Issue 1: where to put the builder details
=========================================

So the builder details/information section is not the type of info that
should be in the 3-0 side-bar, but that presents a problem for this
page, which most people use to find out one specific detail: the current
status of the builder.

You can see how I have tried to accommodate for this by including the
details in the main content but on the side - I personally think it
looks too crowded, and it *still* breaks the flow of Current status ->
Current log tail.

Any suggestions as to where the details could go? In this (exceptional)
case - where the actual usage of the page is usually for one specific
detail of the context object - the sidebar worked quite well in the past.

Issue 2: A single global actions link in the side-bar?
======================================================

The second issue that I have is that (after some merging of templates)
there is only one global action for this page - 'Change details'. So to
avoid adding a sidebar with just one portlet (actions), itself
containing just one link, I tried to put the action in context with the
details - which I think works, but might go against the 3-0 principles?

The other option would be to find some other content to fill the
side-bar with (such as an 'event-list' of the last 10 builds as
suggested by bigjools). This would work well on this specific page, but
leaves me wondering, will we always be using main-side as long as the
context is editable (ie. requires a 'Change details' link), or is it ok
to include the link in the main section as is?

Note: Christian Robottom Reis wrote in a previous thread:
> is "links in the actions menu are all the links that manipulate
> something that isn't intuitively identifiable on the page." The page
> context is one such thing, since it is represented by the page itself.

Thanks!
-- 
Michael