345229 - Make navbar links more functional

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 324402

(Bugzilla :: User Interface, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Bill Barry]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1b1) Gecko/20060710 Firefox/2.0b1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1b1) Gecko/20060710 Firefox/2.0b1

Most of the people using my installation of Bugzilla (http://bugzilla.stellarfinancial.com/) use saved searches links a lot more than action links and I use edit links most of the time (I am the Bz admin). It would be better if the navbar at the top could display these links as well as the links it currently displays.

I have an idea how this could be achieved, while still maintaining the appearance of the current navbar. I will immediately be attaching a mockup for decision as to whether I should make a patch.


Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Bill Barry]

Attachment: navbar mockup

Here is a mockup, In the html source I have seperated old (existing) markup from new with comment tags. The css could be a little cleaner I guess (pretty much copied and pasted).

Comment 2

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

That's nice! The tabs are a bit hidden--they might be difficult for the average untrained user to find. And since they're so far over to the right, it might be better to have them work on a click than on a rollover.

Comment 3

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

A common way to enable management of multiple toolbars is to provide a mechanism for collapsing the toolbars independently, so a user can display any particular combination of toolbars.

In Mozilla products, that has been done in the past by placing a "grippy" to the left of the toolbar.  When the user clicks the grippy, the toolbar collapses, but the grippy remains visible, so the user can click the grippy again to show the toolbar.

I'm not saying the grippy solution is right here (popular Mozilla products no longer use it, putting UI for showing/hiding toolbars into a menu instead), but it would be worthwhile considering the options for independently choosing which toolbars to display.

It'd also be worth sending these choices to the server automatically via Ajax, so the user's choices persist across page loads.

Comment 4

[Bill Barry]

It already persists across page loads (a cookie)

Comment 5

[Bill Barry]

Attachment: Grippies

I agree, we need to consider options on how this should be done. 

Here is a grippy version (it persists just like the other one via a cookie setting).

Any other ideas?

Comment 6

[Bill Barry]

Attachment: Like first, bigger text, onclick

Comment 7

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

I like this UI.

I'm only not sure if it really has the value here. I'm not sure if all those buttons are so often used that we need to lowerize the actual content of the website to put them in such place. (think of cell phone users, 800x600 etc.)

In my approach (http://landfill.bugzilla.org/gandui/) I decided that the user will often want to use the search. Additionally right-top corner is a good place for options like login/logout. Create account needs to be as separate popup for discoverability.

The more I think about it, the more it seems for me that some of the buttons might find their place on top. New bug, my saved searches... But Sanity Check, Reports, Requests or user parameters are used rare enough to consider letting them stay in less visible place.

Which makes another problem of splitting this into two areas, one with commonly users links, and another with rarely used.

Bottom line is that I like the idea, but I'd not include it in default Bugzilla because it takes very valuable place in top-left for things that are not that important for user. (yes, I also think that current approach is bad, and in my approach we could use top better).

The amount of "things" that user see on the main screen is very important and should be limited to minimum. Every link, block of text, widget that will not be used by the user rises the amount of time and effort user must spend to find what he's looking for.

Comment 8

[Frédéric Buclin]

gandalf, I suggest that we start implementing some UI patches, bit by bit. If you want to start with the top navbar or footer or index.cgi or updating the component/version/milestone fields when changing the product field in show_bug.cgi, that's fine, but let's do it now and "locally" as our ideas may diverge on the global scheme. We freeze the code in less than 2 months.

Comment 9

[Bill Barry]

Attachment: without any hidden items

I took some of Zbigniew Braniecki's ideas and implemented them here in a way that I don't think it is a very big change from what is currently implemented.

I think I like this version best so far. Improvements include:
search box in top right
user specific items directly under search box
commonly used links in header

I tried to change the footer as little as possible (I figured this bug is about the navbar at the top, all I did is maintain current displayed info). The footer changes in http://landfill.bugzilla.org/gandui/ are very nice and I like the version down there (only gripe is the removal of the add buglist form, that should be a popup link somewhere). 

Additionally I included the subtitle area so you can see how it would work.

Comment 10

[Bill Barry]

Is there a tracking bug for 2.24 UI enhancements that this bug could block (and I could add myself to the cc list of)?

Comment 11

[Bill Barry]

Attachment: patch for attachment 229966

Here is a patch that creates attachment 229966 [details]

The only thing it doesn't do is rename "Saved Searches" to "Searches"

Comment 12

[Bill Barry]

Comment on attachment 230027 [details] [diff] [review]
patch for attachment 229966 [details]

2 minor modifications required:
1: When user not logged in, top right corner reads "| New Account | Log In" (first bar needs to be removed)
2: the h3 thing needs reworking (view a bug with changes, header has too much text).

I'll do it monday.

Comment 13

[Bill Barry]

Attachment: Fixes the issues in the previous comment

Comment 14

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Hey Bill. Could you also post screenshots or a link to an installation that has the most recent patch applied?

Comment 15

[Bill Barry]

Attachment: logged out screenshot

This also has attachment 230500 [details] [diff] [review] on bug 286342 applied (renames Action to Common).

Attachment 229966 [details] is exactly what it looks like logged in.

Comment 16

[Bill Barry]

Unfortunately, giving this server a public ip address would require quite a bit of work that my boss wouldn't be happy about (I have to NAT it through a firewall and two routers). If you would like more images of what it would look like under specific conditions I will be happy to provide them (or even if you want me to upload html pages modified to include the stylesheets inline). I am leaving my desk for the night now, if you describe what you would want, I will do it tomorrow.

Comment 17

[Bill Barry]

I have gotten a public instance of this available now:

https://systems-300.stellarfinancial.com/bugzilla-tip/

Comment 18

[Frédéric Buclin]

I think we should follow the UI of attachment 229863 [details], but hovering the pseudo-tabs should open a menu on the fly.

Comment 19

[Frédéric Buclin]

I just realized I already filed bug 324402 about having saved searches available in a menu. About admin actions, they are no longer displayed in the footer of pages since Bugzilla 3.2, see bug 286338. So this makes this bug a duplicate of bug 324402.