launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Ian Clatworthy <ian.clatworthy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Martin Pilkington wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> Following on from my previous email about minor improvements that could be made to Launchpad, I started playing around with more drastic redesigns. While doing this a thought occurred to me about what Launchpad actually is. At the moment the user interface is a website, but in reality Launchpad is quite a complex application. As such is may be nearly impossible to try and make a great user interface for it if you try to work from the base of building a high end website. A better approach would be to build it as a fully fledged application.

Hi Martin,

Those mockups were great! Thanks for putting these together.

> I'm proposing building an alternative UI for Launchpad using the Cappuccino framework. Due to the Launchpad API, this could be a completely separate project and could be provided as an alternative UI. As a completely separate project focused purely on UI, it would allow for a much more unified and consistent UI, which will hopefully end up being easier to use. It will also work more like a fully fledged application, allowing for a more powerful and potentially more customisable user interface.
> 
> I will likely start working on this over christmas or in the new year, but it was suggested I post here to see if anyone else would be interested in contributing.

I'm also planning to experiment over xmas with making Bazaar Explorer a
better "LP desktop client". The integration with LP code hosting and
merge proposals is pretty nice now[1] but there's plenty of scope for
making the workflow even smoother IMO.

My focus will be on adding value over the current feature set rather
than on porting browser-based functionality to a desktop app. For
example, I'd like to make it easy for users to create "assistants" or
"dashboards" so they can see at a glance (and action) stuff like:

* unanswered questions
* new bugs
* merge proposals

for a batch of projects they care about. I'd like these to be soft-coded
in an xml file so others can build whatever assistants/dashboards
interest them. launchpadlib will be key to providing this magic.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, I'd love to hear/see your
thoughts on useful assistants/dashboards, particuarly for new users.

Ian C.

[1]
http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/explorer/en/tutorials/foss-contribute.html