Default PPA Page not nearly as useful as the +packages view

[Dustin Kirkland ]

Howdy!

I love me some PPAs.

However, when I'm clicking from a user/team's page, to the PPA page, I never, ever, ever, ever, ever find the default view useful. I always, always, always, always have to click one more time, to the "View Package Details" link. That view is far superior, and always has what I need -- what packages are available, what versions, where are the build successes/failures, etc.

It might be nice to add the "Adding this PPA to your system" and "Uploading packages to this PPA" sections to the +packages view, but aside from those two bits, the far, far, far more important bits are in the +packages view.

Thanks!
Dustin

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Hi Dustin, thanks for the bug.

The first page is is supposed to be a user-centric view and the +packages a developer-centric view. Bearing that in mind, what particular aspects apart from the ones you listed should be on the first page?

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

(I should also add that the split was done so that we could have a user-facing page for commercial PPAs so it lists their contents but nothing else)

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Screen shot attached. The circled section is what I really want/need to see.

Perhaps it could be conditional? If you are the owner or member of the team that owns the PPA, then perhaps show the circled section? If you're merely a user, then just leave the page as is?

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

Or if its commercial, neuter it, if its noncommercial make it as
useful as possible.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Dustin,

So I think what's happening here is that you're a developer and want to see the developer info first, to save a click to load the extra page?

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

On Tuesday 20 September 2011 00:03:58 you wrote:
> Or if its commercial, neuter it, if its noncommercial make it as
> useful as possible.

It's not quite that easy because we also had reports a while back of non-
technical users getting thoroughly confused by the original PPA page when
landing on it. It's extremely hard to please everyone, so the easiest thing we
can do is to detect if you are a PPA uploader for that PPA and redirect you.
This would mean you can never see the first page though, which is why we
haven't done that so far. If enough people don't care about that we may just
do it.

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 4:44 AM, Julian Edwards
<email address hidden> wrote:
> So I think what's happening here is that you're a developer and want to
> see the developer info first, to save a click to load the extra page?

Yes, I think that's accurate. I don't need or want to know how to add
the PPA to my system... I want to see what versions of what packages
are in there, if there are builds queued, and most importantly, if
there are build failures!

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 5:05 AM, Julian Edwards
<email address hidden> wrote:
> It's not quite that easy because we also had reports a while back of non-
> technical users getting thoroughly confused by the original PPA page when
> landing on it. It's extremely hard to please everyone, so the easiest thing we
> can do is to detect if you are a PPA uploader for that PPA and redirect you.
> This would mean you can never see the first page though, which is why we
> haven't done that so far.  If enough people don't care about that we may just
> do it.

What if the two pages were combined?

Such that, if it's deemed that you have *upload* rights to this PPA
(ie, a member of the owning team), then additionally display the
package details blob? And if you're not (presumably just a user
looking to download some warez), then the view remains the same?
Would that not solve both cases (user and developer)?

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

It's pretty hard to do that because of the security model we have. It needs quite a lot more thought, and I think we need to get a usability expert on this, it's probably going to need a few rounds of accurate requirements gathering and user testing.

See also bug 437215 and bug 339951