341486 - Bugzilla front page UI has lots of trapped whitespace

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 475063

(Bugzilla :: User Interface, enhancement)

Description

[timeless]

Compare:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
https://mail.google.com/mail/
http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/

please log out from each of these if you happen to have login tokens for them. better, use a random browser you've never used before (I used Konqueror 3.5.2).

expected results:
very little trapped whitespace as seen in each of bmo and gmail.

gmail leaves whitespace in the gripper margin which is perfectly acceptable.
bmo has a bit of whitespace around its cells but in an a fairly tolerable manner.

actual results:
the center of the page is trapped whitespace.

your eyes jump to the center, find nothing and drift *left*. my eyes then focus on a login/password field. I ignore everything else, get frightened and decide that this stupid web site requires me to log in before i can do anything else. after all, it's displaying the login screen prominently, just like gmail.

notes:
gmail wants me to login, it uses a border, and some splashes of color to draw my attention to its login screen (plus it probably focuses the login field).

bmo doesn't require a login screen and its placement of the login field *separately* from the things you can do list makes that clear to me.
my eyes
1. travel to "Got a problem?" in its red bordered box and then
2. down the page to Find a bug: (except that konqueror won't let me copy find a bug, because someone got clever and made it a label!).
3. I then read the rest of the column.
-- my only problem is that this column doesn't explain that these are things i might want to do, they're just random links :( -- but that's another bug.
4. then my eyes drift to the login field which i can see is clearly not related to the things i can do.

Comment 1

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: possible UI

The UI is by far not perfect, this is only what I could think about. Note that the version appears in the header. ;)

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

Any comment about this screenshot?

Comment 3

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: possible UI, v2

same design as before, but with glob's patch from bug 341495 applied. It looks even better. :)

Comment 4

[Frédéric Buclin]

err.. sorry for this pink color used in the footer. It should be gray-blue, of course (I use pink on my installation to be sure I'm not committing things on b.m.o by mistake ;) ).

Comment 5

[Frédéric Buclin]

I had a discussion with glob on IRC to decide what to put in the left box when the user is logged in (as the login form won't appear anymore). I think that would be a good place to put some personal data such as the number of requests where the current user is the requestee, or the number of open bugs assigned to him, or the last 5 bugs added to the DB, etc... We should find a way to not require too much from the DB (or probably, we should do these request from the shadow DB, not the DB itself). Comments?

Comment 6

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: possible UI, when logged in, v1

Here is an example of what could be shown when being logged in. It's only an example, we would have to discuss what should be shown (maybe thanks to a user pref).

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thoughts:
* Under "new to bugzilla" is there an appropriate page to link to for "common mistakes"? 
* Does it work differently/better if you put the login stuff on the right, picture in center, and stuff that doesn't require login on the left?  (this gets back to "your eyes jump to the center, find nothing and drift *left*. my eyes then focus on a login/password field..." which, though dramatic, has a reasonable point)

Overall, this is headed in a good direction.

Comment 8

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #7)
> * Under "new to bugzilla" is there an appropriate page to link to for "common
> mistakes"? 

Maybe could we add a link pointing to http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/tip/html/faq.html or http://wiki.mozilla.org/Bugzilla:FAQ

Comment 9

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

I like it. It's better than current one, so I'm ok with using it :)

(I'm still working on my Bugzilla UI! And I'm willing to reuse your approach mixed with my approach of main website! :))

Comment 10

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #9)
> (I'm still working on my Bugzilla UI! And I'm willing to reuse your approach
> mixed with my approach of main website! :))

Yeah, I think you could use the left gray-blue box for AJAX or even remove the picture on the right to use it to display useful information too (for instance when the user is logged in). I think it's indeed possible to mix our two approaches here. :)

Comment 11

[Teemu Mannermaa (:wicked)]

Just for the record, I do like this proposed new UI. As long as the top/bottom navbar duplication is removed. I especially like the personal stats and links to interesting bugs one could see when logged on. Would make the frontpage a bit more usefull to have. :)

Somehow I think the login page would be better on the middle. Not sure why and it'll work for me in the left hand side too.

Comment 12

[Frédéric Buclin]

The logged out front page got a complete new UI in Bugzilla 3.4, see bug 475063. For logged in users, this is covered by bug 130835.