PPA button missing on edge

[Jonathan Marsden]

https://edge.launchpad.net/~jmarsden does not display a grey button labeled Personal Package Archive.
This is in the bar of buttons just above my name, that goes "Profile, Related Software, Karma.

I do not see any obvious way get from this page to my PPA (I checked in case this was some new
UI "improvement" being tested!).

On the production site, https://launchpad.net/~jmarsden the PPA button is present at the right,
just as it has been for many months.

Jonathan

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Launchpad could do a better job in general of advertising changes to the interface.

In this case, the PPA link has moved further down the page, but this change isn't advertised anywhere near where the old link used to be.

Martin, maybe to get people used to the new position, the navigation menu should still have a "Personal Package Archives" item, but it should act as an internal anchor that scrolls you down the page to the PPAs section? Then after a month or two, once people are used to the new position, the navigation menu link could be removed.

[Jonathan Marsden (jmarsden)]

I found the new location of the link some time after posting the bug report, but failed to add a comment to that effect. The new location is "off screen" on a smallish resolution browser screen (1152 x 864 in my case), making it far less usable than the old one. Was the need to scroll down to find the new link considered when the UI change was designed?

I assume this change is related to the idea that I might at some future date have multiple PPAs... which is fine in principle. The UI change could have been to leave it alone *until* I do in fact have multiple PPAs, and then to make the button link to a list of them, not just to remove the button, when I still only have one PPA! Is the rationale for this UI change written up somewhere that I could/should have seen and been able to comment on? Or are we waiting for LP to become fully open source before such comment and discussion on proposed UI changes in LP by mere users is possible?

Since LP development is currently still closed... if there is a "focus group" that tests proposed LP UI changes, are there a couple of MOTUs in that focus group? If not, could/should there be? If LP UI changes are not currently tested in some way like this before release... shouldn't they be? Focus group testing of usability is pretty much de rigeur in closed source software development these days, isn't it?

> Launchpad could do a better job in general of advertising changes to the interface.

Agreed. At minimum. how about an email to the beta testers list, indicating the most recent batch of UI changes and the reasons for them, *before* those changes go live on edge?

I'm tempted to suggest that leaving the UI alone as much as possible would greatly aid productivity of those who use it regularly, such as MOTUs and (in my case) wannabe MOTUs, but that's a whole different discussion!

Personal opinion: An LP development focus on (a) performance and (b) becoming 100% open source would be more appreciated by many regular LP users than unannounced tweaks to the UI that do not appear to have much immediate practical usefulness.

> ... maybe to get people used to the new position, the navigation menu should still
> have a "Personal Package Archives" item, but it should act as an internal anchor
> that scrolls you down the page to the PPAs section?

IMO this is still a net worsening of the usability of UI in the case where there is only one PPA, since what used to take one mouse click would then take two. Why slow people down unnecessarily? Removing the button later would just make it even worse! I'd suggest putting the button back (permanently!), and having it link directly to the PPA when there is just one PPA, and link to a list of PPAs when there is more than one PPA. Or even AJAXify the button bar so it drops down a menu of PPAs in the second case???

I'm not a UI expert, but it seems clear to me that this change as currently implemented reduces usability in the common case of having exactly one PPA. The possible benefits for those few who have multiple PPAs do not seem to me to outweigh this.

Jonathan

[Martin Albisetti (beuno)]

I think mpt's proposal is a good idea. Leave the PPA link and make it scroll down, so people get used to it first.
Celso, is that possible to do before rolling out to production?

[Martin Albisetti (beuno)]

Jonathan, just so you know, launchpad beta users like yourself, are one of our focus groups ;)

[Jonathan Marsden (jmarsden)]

MPT's idea is better than what we have now on edge. Especially
if the link stays put and is not removed "later".

Seeing as I'm part of a focus group...

Can you please explain why (in the common case of a single PPA)
the new "improved" UI you/MPT are now suggesting turns what used to be
a one click operation into a two click operation, and yet it is (apparently)
considered an improvement? To me, that is a clear loss of speed
and productivity, and so by definition a worse UI than the original one.

What are the benefits of the new approach that more than make up
for this, and so make the extra click worth tolerating? Are they
explained somewhere online I can read?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

The navigation menu would not work for multiple PPAs (at least, it might work for two or three, but not more), so Launchpad needed to present them some other way. And it would be awkward for PPAs to be presented one way for people with one of them, and a very different way for people with more than one.

This was originally raised publicly in bug 334889. My offer in that bug report, to produce a list of suggestions for shortening person pages to make the PPA section easier to get to, still stands.

[Celso Providelo (cprov)]

RF 8109