Attachments within comments and "Bug attachments" box are redundant

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

A bug report page lists attachments in two ways: (1) interleaved with the comments, and (2) in their own "Bug attachments" box down the side.

The advantage of #1 is that it shows who added the attachment and when, while #2 does not.
The disadvantage of #1 is that attachments usually aren't consecutive, and (along with the comment styling) this means a lot of scrolling to see them all.

The advantage of #2 is that it lets anyone delete the attachment or change its metadata (which it falsely refers to as "edit"-ing the attachment), while #1 does not.
The disadvantage of #2 is that it is so narrow, it often truncates attachment filenames.

It is clumsy that attachments are listed in two ways simultaneously on one page (and currently-proposed solutions for bug 345567 would increase the complexity still further). Instead it should be possible to combine the lists, keeping the advantages of both, while eliminating the disadvantages of both.

One way of fixing this would be to abolish the "Bug attachments" box. Instead, on any bug report that has attachments, have a toggle above the comments, perhaps at the right:

*All comments* | _Attachments only (3)_

Clicking "Attachments only" would hide all comments that don't contain attachments, and further, collapse the non-attachment parts of those comments that do. Clicking "All comments" would restore the hidden comments, along with the collapsed text of the comments that have attachments. Ideally, these transitions would be animated.

It would also be necessary for each attachment's "Edit" link to emigrate from the "Bug attachments" box to the appropriate place in the bug comments.

[Eleanor Berger (intellectronica)]

This will fit nicely with the work for interleaving comments and activity, since we plan to allow toggling the display of comments and certain types of activity.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I had forgotten that I'd reported this, and in conversation with John Lea just now he suggested exactly the same idea. He also suggested adding a "Changes" item for changes to status, importance etc.

So it might look something like this:

*All* | _Comments_ | _Changes_ | _Attachments (3)_

Facebook displays a similar toggle for filtering your updates on your Profile page.

[Eleanor Berger (intellectronica)]

Yes, that's exactly what we're planning to do. Once we've got that in place we'll get rid of the activity log and the attachments portlet.