launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

2009/9/2 Tom Berger <tom.berger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> One of the bugs application pages we're going to redesign for the 3.0
> release is the bugs index page (bugs.l.n/project). The current page is
> hard to use and not focused enough.
>
> The goals for the new design are:
>
> 1. Serve as the main entry point for bug searches.
> 2. Serve as the main entry point for filing new bugs.
> 3. Provide easy-to-use links to common predefined searches.
> 4. Provide an overview of the bugs in the project.

I love you too!

> The most interesting changes proposed are:
>
> * All action links are grouped together in the top-right part of the page.
>  * The link for reporting new bugs will eventually raise an inline UI
> so that the user doesn't have to navigate to a new page.

I can't see where this link is, or would be.  It should be prominent.

[OK, after writing the rest of this mail I saw it at the top of the
portlet.  I think that proves my point: it's next to a whole bunch of
obscure administrative data like the choice of bug tracker and bug
supervisor (whatever that is) so people are invited to ignore it.
This will be less strong if it's in color, but still.  On the other
hand it looks like there's a pattern that there will be important
things in bold color at the top right, so perhaps it's ok. ]

Please look at having a help link next to "bug supervisor" and
"security contact"; it's not obvious what they mean.

I'll prod again at the idea of filing a bug by typing into the text
box, having it show just the matching bugs, and then having a new link
to report a bug - so dupefinding and other kinds of search will be
more unified.  (Think, to use a somewhat weird analogy, of tree
algorithms where lookup and insert are just the same except that when
the search terminates without finding the object, you insert it.)
People are going to say "I want to report a bug, here's a thing I can
type into and click submit"...  The search box is at least a very
effective decoy...

Obvious the sort dropdown should say what it's currently sorted by,
not "order by".  The default order on this page should be explicitly
available in that menu and it should have some kind of sensible name.
If you can't think of a pithy name, maybe the concept is too vague.
Maybe it should be "heat" which is a specifically defined amalgam of
rate of comments, users affected, importance, etc.  I think it would
be fine to do 3.0 without that though.

The basic idea of having one search that pleases everyone is good but
it may be hard.  I think the best I can think of is "critical, then
most-recently-changed" for giving overall awareness of the project
state, or even just "most recently changed".

It would be great if changing the sort order eventually just reloaded
that list within the single page, and eventually if even typing did
live filtering.  At any rate designing the layout so that it can
eventually work that way would be good.  I think this one would work
well.

I think and hope you're planning to have the results of a search or
clicking one of the filters be a page that looks just like this, but
filtered.  That would be great.

I don't think the "current bugs" heading is earning its keep.
Obviously they're bugs (because they have little bug icons and there's
a big "Bugs in" heading), and obviously they're current because they
have a status.

It would be great, and probably also out of scope, to do the kind of
disclosure done in the dupe finder to let you see the descriptions.

> * All predefined search links are below, on the right-hand part of the page.

Please think about adding some more while you're here, as you could
arguably fix <https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/malone/+bug/420807> and
<https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/malone/+bug/420799> by having
workflow-oriented links to categories of

 * bugs that need to be triaged
 * bugs that need to be finished off
 * bugs that have patches

Incidentally (and offtopic for 3.0), it would be cool to give an
over-time view by showing the daily or weekly delta next to these
numbers, like they do with stock markets:

  4 Critical bugs (+3 today)

that may be better than a sparkline.

> * The list of tags is now presented as a tag 'cloud'. The size of tags
> will be determined by their relative prominence in the project, with
> official tags factored to appear more prominent.

That sounds great.  Please have a link to see all tags on a new page.

> * Advanced search options will be accessible from within the page
> itself, so that the user can initiate complex searches without
> navigating to a new page.

Obviously this needs to be smaller than it now is.

> * The pie chart is gone. It seems nobody is going to miss it.

Nup.

>  * Eventually, we'd like to provide a chart of the status of bugs over
> time, but that's not going to be possible for 3.0 because we don't yet
> collect this data.
> * The lists of bugs in the project are combined into one standard bug
> listing with 'top bugs'.

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