[packagekit] A new design update viewer

[Robin Norwood]

Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 13:24 -0500, Robin Norwood wrote:
>> o It seems odd on the first page to have a list of (at most) 3 or so
>> items (normal updates, security updates, ?).  Then we jump to a separate
>> window if we want details.  Maybe a hybrid where you have '2 normal
>> updates ->', then a click to open up a 'tree' of the normal updates.
>
> Maybe, I'm not against this idea but I quite liked the simplicity of the
> "how important are the updates" overview window.

Well, huge-long-list by default is certainly bad.  Maybe if the UI
somehow indicated that there were a fixed set of different types of
updates, it would bother me less.  As an alternative along these lines,
we could show all the 'types' of updates all the time:

135 Normal Updates
No Security updates

And make it look less a dynamic list.  (Take it out of the tree view?)

>> 2 normal updates -> (click)
>>   - Foo update
>>   - Bar update
>> 
>> And then click on Foo update or Bar update to open up the details pane.
>> 
>> This is kindof a step backwards to what you had before, though...
>
> Sure. I like to keep things quite simple.

Well, the initial UI would be much the same as it is now, but the
difference would be that clicking on the update type/count would open up
the details in the same window instead of 'select and push Review
Updates' button opening a new window.  I think people expect that
clicking something gives them a more detailed view of that thing.

(This is a seperate idea from the suggestion above of taking the update
types out of the list format)

>> o On my system, the 'details' pane shows four lines, but also has a
>> scrollbar so you can scroll down and see the little blank space below
>> the lines.  Can we just make this show all the data in the pane with no
>> scrollbar?  Assuming a fixed number of lines, this should be safe.
>
> It's not a fixed number of lines. I'm guessing you're on rawhide, and
> you don't get the extended metadata you do from fedora-updates.

Yeah, I knew this, and managed to forget while writing the email.
Ignore me. :-)

>> o There's no way back to the first page!
>
> There is now! :-)

Yah!

>> o When I click from update to update, the details pane goes away and
>> returns.  Can we just blank it out and leave it open until it's
>> refreshed?
>
> Do you think this is better? What do you other guys say?

The pane popping up and vanishing is very distracting, IMHO.

>> o There are potentially more details for a given update - can we have
>> double-click open a new window with lots of detail?
>
> Hmm. I think it should all be shown in the textview widget, we can
> scroll down if required.

Yep, you're right, I was confused above.  My only complaing about the
way it is now is that there's a blank space below the last entry:

http://people.redhat.com/rnorwood/update_system_screenshot.png

Makes it look not-quite-right to me.

</nit>

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching