History for SeriousUserInterfaceNiggles

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  Status: Discussion phase - modest urgency

  I realize that "serious" and "niggles" are a bit contradictory -
  i guess i'm trying to leave open the mandate of this page to a
  wide variety of issues, all concerning the user interface.  There
  certainly is a number of things that need improvement.

  - It needs to be less cluttered in lots of places.  We may be able to 
    us TreeTagExposure to do some significant reductions, but this will
    no doubt be an ongoing issue (and one we have to be careful to avoid
    exacerbating with other developments!
 
  - The email notifications format is too intimidating.  It makes sense to
    have some of the clutter - but perhaps more needs to be put below the
    substance of the messages (the item text) - and we need to consider
    whether trackerisms like the issue emblem are too unfamiliar for
    comfort.

  - Overview sorting - it should be possible to sort on important columns -
    both the builtin attributes like last-message date, and also tailored
    traits like urgency, category, whatever.  And it really must be
    possible to change the order of issues, to show, eg, most recent first
    as well as least recent.
  
  - <a name="keytraits"></a>
    It may sense for some workflow and presentation purposes to have some
    builtin traits that can't be changed - or much better, some way to 
    designate the names of traits that serve particular purposes (urgency,
    due date, what else?), and the ordering of their values.

  - People need other kinds of traits than enumerated string values - eg: 

    - Integer ranges

    - Date (maybe date ranges?)

    - Serial numbers

    - What else?

  - Stage History - it is useful to be able to see how an item has 
    progressed through the various stages of it's life.  I know that this
    information can be intimated from looking at the issue items, but that 
    is a lot of hard work for most people, especially since the stage
    changes are mixed up with lots of "noise".  --  StephenHarrison

    - *klm July 7, 00 - Huh - actually, every issue has an "Issue History"
      tab, visible to supporters, which provides just that information!
      Not bad!-)

    - sph July 11, 00 - Agreed, the Issue History tab does show that 
      information, but it is not really suitable for what I describe above, 
      which is something clear and informative from a simple users point of 
      view.

      promote/msgfromrole/etc is all rather confusing if you don't
      understand the tracker from a programming angle.  Maybe reworking the
      Issue History view to be more friendly in the way it presents its data
      would be the solution.

  - Simpler issues view - The view of issues is the focal point for Tracker
    use and as such it needs to be as clear and intuitive as possible.  One
    way to achieve this is keep the information presented on this view as 
    simple as possible.  Generally there are only a few pieces of 
    information which are of interest to a user at the agrogate, overview 
    level.  Obviously this list of attributes will vary between the 
    different TrackerUserTypes.
    --  StephenHarrison

  - As far as the 'issue number' in the subject line goes, I'm planning
    to use that in the EmailReception bit of the tracker, so I'd be sad
    if it went away. The only real alternative would be some sort of 
    utter foulness in a reply-to address, but this would require magic
    configuration of a mail transport agent - sendmail and postfix could
    do it, but I don't want to think about the poor bugger behind Exchange.
    :) -- anthony

  - The other thing to note about the tracker's main view is that it's 
    too complex. There should be a short simple one-line-per-open-issue
    view that you can get to quickly. -- anthony

  - The main view currently uses alternating background colors to 
    visually separate adjacent rows.  A more effective use would be
    to map some attribute or combination of attributes to different
    colors.  The basic idea comes from both "Roundup":http://www.lfw.org/ping/roundup-1.gif
    and "Xen":https://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=2018 screenshots, and from
    principles established in Edward R. Tufte's books on visual displays of
    information.  -- phansen

  - Generally speaking, I see no reason why the user interface should 
    clip things like the issue "title" to a fixed size.  If the text is longer,
    clipping it makes it unreadable anyway, and in most cases the current
    clip size is far too small.  The "Roundup":http://www.lfw.org/ping/roundup-1.gif screenshot has
    examples of a much better way, IMHO.  -- phansen

  Owner: KenManheimer<br>
  Last major update: June 21, 2000<br>