Misaligned price in tile when there are no reviews

[Mark Curtis]

software-center 4.1.20, Ubuntu 11.10 alpha
software-center 13.10, Ubuntu 14.04

When an application has no reviews, it causes the price (e.g. "Free") to be moved up a line and therefore isn't aligned horizontally with other application licenses.
Perhaps this could be resolved with a placeholder for the stars "not yet reviewed" or simply (0)

Screenshot with proposed solution: https://launchpadlibrarian.net/78156594/mockup.jpg

[Matthew McGowan (mmcg069)]

Could you provide an example app where this occurs for you?

[Mark Curtis (merkinman)]

Attached is a screenshot, underlines the issue in red, with a possible solution mini-mockup underlined in green.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Thanks for this perceptive bug report.

Maybe it's clearest to compare potential solutions by describing the drawbacks of each.

* Status quo: The price for items with reviews is misaligned with price for items without reviews.
* "(0)" when there are no reviews: Not obvious, and the "(0)" would repeat for almost every "What's New" item post-release.
* "Not yet reviewed" text: Would be monotonous when repeating for almost every "What's New" item post-release.
* Blank line when there are no reviews: Would look odd.
* Position price above the reviews rather than below it: Would make price harder to find, next to category/subcategory text at the same font size (which seems to be missing from your screenshot, for some reason).
* Move price below the icon, like it was before yesterday: Would look awkward and make tiles needlessly taller.

I'm inclined to say that the misaligned price, while a little awkward, is the least bad option of those six. What other options are there?

[Mark Curtis (merkinman)]

I'll have to disagree with "(0)" or "Not yet reviewed" repeating looking monotonous. The vast majority of apps are "Free" and that doesn't look monotonous, if it does, then that's another bug.
As for another option, perhaps display the stars but greyed out so as not to be confused with a great 5 star or terrible 0 star rating?

[Greg A (etulfetulf)]

The proposed solution in the screenshot doesn't appeal to me, it is not at all obvious what the (0) means.

mpt: why would moving the prize below the icon would make the titles taller?

[Mark Curtis (merkinman)]

How about this with grey stars? It's not the hollow star so as to not be confused with just having a rating of 0.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Merk, yes, repeating "Free" is monotonous too. (Maybe I have a high sensitivity to monotony.) But that's pretty much unavoidable -- it would be hard to convey zero price any other way -- whereas repeating "(0)" is avoidable.

Greg, moving the price below the icon would (and did) make the tiles taller because the top of the price line would be lower than it is currently.

Merk, I think you have a good idea there with the grey stars. We wouldn't even need the "(0)" in that case -- just the stars by themselves could be enough. What do you think?

[Mark Curtis (merkinman)]

Not having the (0) is fine by me, it may even further differentiate an application with no reviews from one with all 0 star reviews.

[Gary Lasker (gary-lasker)]

It seems there's enough design information in this bug now that we can work on implementation, so I will mark this one as triaged.

Many thanks, all!

[dino99 (9d9)]

That version is no more maintained