launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Barry Warsaw wrote on 15/10/09 12:30:
>...
> +1.  I already love our breadcrumbs.
> 
> The one place where they don't work so well is when there's more than
> one path from the root to where you are.

This has always been true for most Launchpad pages, and is becoming more
true over time. For example, distribution series and source packages are
parallel hierarchies for distribution series source packages. Projects,
reporters, and assignees are parallel hierarchies for bug reports.
People and projects are parallel hierarchies for branches. People and
projects will soon be parallel hierarchies for PPAs. And you can jump
into a particular application, such as Bugs, at most points in the
hierarchy.

For example, to translate the Ubuntu software-center package into
Arabic, you can take any of these routes:
*   Launchpad -> Translations -> Ubuntu Karmic -> Arabic ->
    software-center
*   Launchpad -> Ubuntu -> Translations -> 9.10 Arabic ->
    software-center
*   Launchpad -> Ubuntu -> Karmic -> Translations -> Arabic ->
    software-center
*   Launchpad -> Ubuntu -> Karmic -> software-center -> 1.0 ->
    Translations -> yes, I really did mean software-center -> Arabic

And there are other routes that don't work yet, but should, e.g.:
*   Launchpad -> Ubuntu -> software-center -> Translations -> Arabic.

Having multiple routes is a good thing, I think, because with Launchpad
- -- much more so than other sites -- it's quite unlikely that someone
looking for something starts from the front page. They type URLs or use
bookmarks instead. But multiple routes does mean that any single set of
breadcrumbs implicitly representing "how you got to this specific page"
will be wrong most of the time. This is why the 2.0 hierarchy bar didn't
try to go that deep, or to mingle applications with other hierarchy;
those tasks could be better handled by other navigation mechanisms.

>                                           A good example are branches. 
> Should the breadcrumb lead through the project or through the user?

An early mockup of the Launchpad 2.0 branch page didn't have any
hierarchy bar at all, on the grounds that we didn't know which way you'd
come. :-) But eventually we just picked one and stuck to it.

> Yes and no <wink> depending on context that Launchpad can't know
> anything about.  I'd love to have a ui solution for that.
>...

This question came up in the Nielsen Norman Group usability course I
took a few weeks ago. The suggestion the instructor gave was along the
lines of "choose the most likely". But I think most of the sites that
suggestion was intended for don't have an IA as complex as Launchpad's
needs to be, where "most likely" usually means "pretty unlikely".

Cheers
- --
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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