Re: [Launchpad-users] [Launchpad-dev] RFC: Launchpad package navigation redesign

[Jonathan Lange <jml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 4:40 PM, Julian
Edwards<julian.edwards@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Howdy Launchpadders!
>
> I'm sure you've seen some of the other RFCs going out asking for feedback on
> some new 3.0 page designs, and this email is also one of those.
>
> The page here:
>
> https://dev.launchpad.net/SoyuzPackageUI
>
> lists the results of a sprint that the Soyuz team, together with our design
> guru Martin Albisetti, had earlier this year.  The main aim is to reduce the
> number of pages required to get information about packages in Launchpad, and
> as you can see in that wiki page we want to obsolete some existing pages.
>

I made a comment on this page, but it doesn't seem like there's much there.

> To do this required some large changes in the distribution source package page
> (e.g. https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-utils) and the
> distribution source package release page (e.g.
> https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-utils/1.0.20-2ubuntu1)
>
> The wiki page here shows the current mock-ups of the general direction we want
> these pages to head in:
>
> https://dev.launchpad.net/VersionThreeDotO/Soyuz/NavigationRedesignUI
>
> I would like to ask for your feedback on these mock-ups, in particular:
>
>  * Is there any information taken away that you want to see?
>  * Is there any information that could be added?
>  * Are there any use cases not covered by these new pages?
>

First thing I have to say is that this is an amazing improvement. I'm
comparing these two pages:
  https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hotwire
  http://people.canonical.com/~ed/dsp_mockup.png

and the difference is very noticeable -- well done.

I'll shove these pages in front of the Ubuntu Foundations team
tomorrow and get their thoughts.

Some quick thoughts & questions:
- Needs more space around the logo, below and to the right.

- The "Get Involved" thing looks out of place, and to be honest, I
don't think of filing a bug as 'getting involved'

- This might not be UI policy, but text that runs so wide is harder to
read for me.

- Why do you say '300 bugs' and '20 questions' at all?

- If you do have to refer to bugs and questions, it might be better to
say '200 untriaged bugs and 15 questions that need answering'.

- More vertical space between distroseries

- "Published" being bold seems out of place

- Seeing "<Verbed> on <date>" makes me wonder who verbed it.

- The 'Builds' section seems like it's floating there with nothing to
do. I don't know what it means or why it's there.

- It took me a while to realize that it wasn't a checkbox I could untick.

- The "Full publishing history" link should be below the publishing
history, not below the PPA list

- How is the PPA list sorted? I'd hope it's by some product of
popularity and freshness.

- The link says "search for more...". Does it really link to a search
page, or does it just link to a listing? If so, maybe worth choosing a
different verb. ("There are N more untrusted versions..." perhaps)

- There doesn't seem to be a way of linking the source package to upstream

- The upstream link, where present, should be really prominent, I
think. I know there can be lots of them, but I bet that either the
current release link or the dev focus link makes sense almost all the
time.

- Maybe there should be a link to browse the source code

- If you came here as an Ubuntu user from a google search, I think
you'd be a bit confused. I'm not sure what to do about that.

- Do we have access to the popularity contest data? Can we show that?

- Intermediate Ubuntu users might not be able to map from binary
package name to source package name in their head. Should we include
the names of the binary packages that this is built into?

Thanks for doing this, I hope these help.

jml