Navigation: hard to find source code for project.

[illume]

Hello,

Source code is hard to find when browsing a project. This is a design/navigation issue.

This is a common complaint I hear about launchpad, and something I struggle with myself.

It would be great to be able to browse the code from the front page directly. Now it takes a few clicks to find the source code.

One of the most confusing parts is: "Clicking on 'trunk' does not take you to the code".

cheers,

[Jonathan Lange (jml)]

Current way is:
  1. Click "Branches"
  2. Click "Browse the source code"

Which part of this is hard to find?

[illume (illume)]

Hi,

ah, cool. I didn't know you could get there that way.

I'll explain it some more...

There is a big bolded 'trunk' link that doesn't go to a browse view. There's an arrow under this trunk link. Then there are maybe 30ish other links.

Compare to git hub(and other hosting services), where there is a listing on the main project page.
    eg. http://github.com/illume/numpy3k/tree/work

That is zero clicks to view the tree, compared to 2/3 clicks to find it on launchpad.

cu,

[Aaron Bentley (abentley)]

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Jonathan Lange wrote:
> Current way is:
> 1. Click "Branches"
> 2. Click "Browse the source code"
>
> Which part of this is hard to find?

Branches. I don't want "branches", I want "source code".

Aaron
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[Jonathan Lange (jml)]

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 2:07 PM, illume <email address hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> ah, cool.  I didn't know you could get there that way.
>
> I'll explain it some more...
>
> There is a big bolded 'trunk' link that doesn't go to a browse view.
> There's an arrow under this trunk link.  Then there are maybe 30ish
> other links.
>
> Compare to git hub(and other hosting services), where there is a listing on the main project page.
>    eg.  http://github.com/illume/numpy3k/tree/work
>
> That is zero clicks to view the tree, compared to 2/3 clicks to find it
> on launchpad.
>

Yeah, the big bold trunk link is pretty confusing. And I agree that
the project page is too busy and lacks focus.

We're _probably_ not going to ever have the source code tree on the
front page of the project like github. Even though it does some other
stuff, Github is primarily a code hosting system. Launchpad strives to
be much more.

As for this particular bug, I'm not sure what the next step is.

jml

[Brad Crittenden (bac)]

The product overview page does have a link labeled "View branch content" under the "Development focus" section. That link takes you to the source code. So it is already there though confusingly labeled and not prominent.

[illume (illume)]

hello,

Perhaps adding 'source code' to the label somehow will help?

"View branch content and source code". Or just "View source code".

Explanations of the terminology like 'branches' could probably help too.

How about having the source code view (the "View the branch content") content included at the bottom of the front page? I imagine viewing the source code of hosted projects could be a main priority for many projects hosted on launchpad. If this is the case, then bringing it within zero clicks would be good.

cheers,

[Paul Hummer (rockstar)]

We used "branch content" because some users had issue with saying the branch was code when it was documentation or any number of other potential contents.

[Sam Bull (dreamsorcerer)]

Whenever I want to look at the source code for a project, I click the code tab. Immediately my eyes are drawn to the table of branches and I even move my cursor half way across the screen ready to click on one. Despite the fact I know that is not what I want, I still find myself doing that everytime.

What I actually want, is to click that "browse the source code" link hidden in the middle of the first sentence on the page. When I've not viewed a code page on Launchpad for a few months, it's even worse as it actually takes me 2 or 3 attempts to find this link.

Solution to this problem:
Replace the hidden link with a big friendly "browse source code" button, in order to make sure it's the first thing your eyes are drawn to and not the last.

I would like to see a nice eye-catching button similar to the download buttons on a project's overview page.

[Launchpad QA Bot (lpqabot)]

r17963 in stable (http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~launchpad-pqm/launchpad/stable/revision/17963) is part of this bug's fix.