419647 - Add a sexy theme browser

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Public Pages, defect)

Description

[Philipp Weissenbacher]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12
Build Identifier: 

Currently there is only a list view. Add a thumbnail view to give a better overview (e.g. ability to quickly compare different themes).

See http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Kilmainham+Gaol&z=t for a good example.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

We plan on taking care of this with a theme browser or manager at some point.

Comment 2

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

Changing name and sexy++ to it gets loving.

Comment 3

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

Some initial design thoughts here:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Update:Remora_UI_Review/Mockups/Home_Page/2007-09-12_revisions/#Theme_Browser

Comment 4

[Philipp Weissenbacher]

Ad initial design thoughts: Frankly, I actually thought of something more simple, like just thumbnails, thus depicting themes by their appearance rather than by their name (which is the currently proposed way).
So that it be easy to select a theme by it's appearance rather than by it's name, category or popularity.

Maybe someone could incorporate this light table kind of design somehow.

Comment 5

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

-> Les

Comment 6

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

Attachment: newer themebrowser variants

Some newer thoughts on theme browsers.

The first is a basic layout with lots of thumbnails on the screen, each of which would just link to the theme's details page.

The second is a list of thumbnails, where clicking on one gives a larger preview.  In this case, because of the design work going on with the category list right now, I've moved the selection of Theme category to the main category list (it wouldn't be part of the theme browser).

- benefits:  not having to go to another page to see a larger preview
- downsides: fewer thumbnails on the screen at a time for quick visual scan

Thoughts?  Completely new directions?  Something simpler you've seen elsewhere?

Comment 7

[Philipp Weissenbacher]

At first: Great work!
I very much like the first one, because it really gives you a quick overview of everything. Though, I'd appreciate a meta category "All" which lists all themes.
For me either, paginated or scroll, would work just fine. I wouldn't show ratings or names or make it sortable. Maybe we could cheat a bit by sorting the thumbnails by their popularity ...

The second is good too, although I'd prefer less many borders (to make it look smoother).

Comment 8

[Les Orchard [:lorchard]]

Attachment: Initial stab at a thumbnail grid style browser

Here's an implementation of a thumbnail grid style theme browser.

Comment 9

[Laura Thomson :laura]

Comment on attachment 323139 [details] [diff] [review]
Initial stab at a thumbnail grid style browser

I see the names of the themes coming up as "Notice: undefined".  View source tells me <b>Notice</b>:  Undefined variable: icon in <b>/opt/amo/site/app/views/addons/browse_thumbs.thtml</b> on line <b>82</b><br />

Comment 10

[Les Orchard [:lorchard]]

Attachment: Second attempt at the thumbnail browser

Looks like I had my settings not sufficiently noisy to produce errors and warnings in Cake.  Changed that, saw the problem, and this new patch should do it.

Comment 11

[Laura Thomson :laura]

Comment on attachment 323476 [details] [diff] [review]
Second attempt at the thumbnail browser

You've accidentally included changes to config/core.php which should probably be in config/config-local.php (which svn ignores).  
In addition, the theme browser for me replaces the page and opens with no CSS - I think it's an interaction with an error in the advanced search javascript.  I'll wait until that's been backed out by fligtar before trying again.

Comment 12

[Les Orchard [:lorchard]]

Attachment: Third attempt, this time without my local config changes

Posting this patch, sans config changes.  Might have dependencies on bug 436973, but I don't think the code on my end will change.

Comment 13

[Laura Thomson :laura]

Comment on attachment 323492 [details] [diff] [review]
Third attempt, this time without my local config changes

Yay, third time lucky.

Comment 14

[Les Orchard [:lorchard]]

Looks like this is checked in with r14511 and working on preview:

https://preview.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:2/cat:all?sort=name

Comment 15

[Philipp Weissenbacher]

Yeah! That's exactly what I've meant! Great work! Thanks!

Comment 16

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

I filed a spinoff, bug 437124, but otherwise, this looks great.

When you sort by date, there are last-updated dates of "Updated November 30, 1999", but that's not specific to this feature; you can see it on production: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:2/cat:all?show=20&sort=updated&page=14

Verified FIXED.  Nice work, Les!

Comment 17

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

Looks really good -- great work!

(In reply to comment #14)
> Looks like this is checked in with r14511 and working on preview:
> 
> https://preview.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:2/cat:all?sort=name
>