286427 - Add context info with clickable links for attachments mentioned in comments

Status: NEW

(Bugzilla :: User Interface, enhancement)

Description

[Stephen Lee]

(Writing "Attachm*nt" in most examples to avoid description getting mangled)

Current behaviour is that a user writing "Attachm*nt 1234" has the text 
linkified and modified to "Attachm*nt 1234 [edit]". This is good because it 
makes the [Edit] link readily available, but bad because it interrupts the flow 
of text (which is particularly annoying for false positives - see bug 251229), 
and (until bug 274906 is fixed) causes some replies to appear to contain text 
like "Attachm*nt 1234 [edit] [edit]"

It occurred to me that the edit link doesn't necessarily need to be inline, but 
it would be nice to have it nearby, possibly with other relevant information 
about the attachment.


One method that appealed to me would be to have such information appear in a 
table to the right of the main comment text (google ad-words style), so that 
the text itself is no longer adjusted.

e.g. Suppose [e-mail] (with the help of bugzilla) adds a comment along 
the lines of:

Additional comment #5 from [e-mail]
(From update of attachment 1234 [details])
Just a couple of points:
1. This a great attachment
2 [details] [diff] [review]. I'd love to see more like it


Current code will change this to something like:

Additional comment #5 from [e-mail]
(From update of attachm*nt_1234 [edit])
Just a couple of points:
1. This a great attachm*nt_
2 [edit]. I'd love to see more like it


With a right-aligned table containing the links we could instead have something 
like the following (with a right aligned table using a proportional font and 
suitable styling rather than this crude ASCII art mockup):

Additional comment #5 from [e-mail]  [###### Comment #5 links ######]
(From update of attachm*nt_1234)             [ Attachm*nt 1234  [Edit]      ]
Just a couple of points:                     [   testcase                   ]
1. This a great attachm*nt_                  [ Attachm*nt 2  [Edit] [Diff]  ]
2. I'd love to see more like it              [   fixes a free memory        ]
                                             [   mismatch error...          ]


This layout would allow for more information about linked items to be presented 
without interrupting the flow of the comment text. The same system should be 
extended to any other auto-linkified items (such as bug NNN, saving the need to 
hover over the bug number to see the description).

It could potentially lead to a further enhancement where a user could 
specify "additional links" to appear there when making a comment, or possibly 
suppress false positives like the link to attachment 2 [details] [diff] [review].

Comment 1

[Stephen Lee]

Attachment: Example of how this very bug report could look...

Just thought I'd attach an html mock-up of the sort of thing I had in mind...
modified from a "View source" from this bug page.

I am assuming for now that all text links in the comment would appear there, in
order of first appearance, together with any relevant information pertaining to
the linked object (although exact details of what is included / excluded might
be subject to discussion or user prefs).

Comment 2

[Shane H. W. Travis]

My opinion is that I *like* in-line bug number hyperlinkification, but one of 
the reasons that I like it is because I can hover over it and get the 
information. If the information is presented on the right, isn't that just as 
good? Well, maybe... but it does take up more screen real-estate, and we need 
to watch out for that.

(On that issue, if you open the above attachment and shrink the screen to 80 
columns wide, your right google-like-bug-bar is floating over the text, making 
both unreadable.)

I do agree that the attachment linkification is really jarring and does break 
up the flow. I'm not sure that this is the way to go, but it's an interesting 
approach.

Regardless, MHO is that you've filed this against the wrong component. This 
seems to me to be first and foremost a UI change. I have changed the component 
to that, so let me know if you strongly disagree.

Comment 3

[Stephen Lee]

(In reply to comment #2)
> My opinion is that I *like* in-line bug number hyperlinkification,

Yes. This should stay, but the box is intended to expand on the visible info 
without breaking the text flow.


> it does take up more screen real-estate, and we need to watch out for that.

A fair point, but I always end up with a big empty white space to the right of 
comments, so in absence of anything else to go there, it is wasted space...

Bug 11901 should guarantee that this spare screen space is always available - 
was about to mark dep, but then saw it is fixed already! :-D


> (On that issue, if you open the above attachment and shrink the screen to 80 
> columns wide, your right google-like-bug-bar is floating over the text,

Good point, although at least on my browser, this only occurs when the window 
is sufficiently narrow that attachment flags are no longer properly visible.
[asks self "why doesn't that happen on google?"]
[answers self "because Bugzilla uses the <pre> tag around its text"]

Putting the table on the left would be a potential way around this. Another 
would be to enclose the current comment and the new table in a larger table.

It probably also wants smaller text, and possibly a fixed width for the 
table... but I figure these are details that can be worked out if it's decided 
that this would be generally considered a useful enhancement.


> I do agree that the attachment linkification is really jarring and does break 
> up the flow. I'm not sure that this is the way to go, but it's an interesting 
> approach.

I'll be happy to WONTFIX this if a better alternative presents itself, and the 
other aspects of this are not felt to be needed.


> This seems to me to be first and foremost a UI change.

I agree. When filing I'd reasoned that it wasn't a pure UI change, as it would 
require perl changes when calling show_bug.cgi, despite UI having been my first 
instinct also.

Comment 4

[Jacob Steenhagen]

(In reply to comment #3)
> > (On that issue, if you open the above attachment and shrink the screen to 80 
> > columns wide, your right google-like-bug-bar is floating over the text,
> 
> Putting the table on the left would be a potential way around this. Another 
> would be to enclose the current comment and the new table in a larger table.

I like putting it on the right in the empty space and think it would look silly
on the left.

> It probably also wants smaller text, and possibly a fixed width for the 
> table... but I figure these are details that can be worked out if it's decided 
> that this would be generally considered a useful enhancement.

Smaller font would probably be helpful. We could also put a button to expand and
collapse the box using JavaScript (expanded by default). For bonus points, there
could be a user pref to not include the box at all.

> > This seems to me to be first and foremost a UI change.
> 
> I agree. When filing I'd reasoned that it wasn't a pure UI change, as it would 
> require perl changes when calling show_bug.cgi, despite UI having been my first 
> instinct also.

Well, there are rarely pure UI changes, but this is primarily about the UI. Any
perl changes would be completely unneeded if the UI part is decided against.

Comment 5

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

It's a good idea to contextually provide additional information about the
referenced attachments.  The best place to put such information is probably into
a tooltip which appears when you hover over the attachment link, something akin
to tinderbox's tooltips when you click a CVS commiter.

Comment 6

[Stephen Lee]

I don't know about tinderbox, but I noticed 'enhanced' tooltips on bonsai after 
filing this (e.g. giving details of the checkin when you hover over the version 
number in CVS Blame etc.)

An active tooltip like this with clickable links sounds good.

Tweaking summary to cover both possible solutions.

Comment 7

[Jacob Steenhagen]

Bug 80388 was about the "enhanced tooltips" being added to bonsai.

Comment 8

[Jacob Steenhagen]

Bug 274906 removed the [edit] links.

Comment 9

[Stephen Lee]

Comment on attachment 177877 [details]
Example of how this very bug report could look...

The more I think about it, the more I like the "magic popups" idea. Marking my
existing mockup as obsolete.

Attachment 34893 [details] from bug 80388 gives an example of the mechanism that we're
after.