Launchpad itself

New U/I adds almost never used "Link a related branch" in a very obtrusive location

Bug #244522 reported by Scott Kitterman
2
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Fix Released
Undecided
Matthew Paul Thomas

Bug Description

Currently I've got 8448 karma for bug management overall and I manage to get listed in the Ubuntu top contributors for bug management:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+topcontributors

So, I think it's safe to say I have some experience about what features get used by a distribution a lot and which ones not. I have never once in all those bugs "Link a related branch" nor wanted to.

I understand wanting to make choices more available, but this should not be in the prime screen real estate of just below the bug description. It is an option that is only relevant to projects that host code on Launchpad. For those of us that sometimes use Launchpad on small screens this added clutter is a significant usability problem.

Tags: lp-bugs motu
Revision history for this message
Reinhard Tartler (siretart) wrote :

Would you feel more comfortable if the links "Link to related branch" and "Link to CVE" would be listed in a seperate portlet on the left side?

Revision history for this message
Scott Kitterman (kitterman) wrote : Re: [Bug 244522] Re: New U/I adds almost never used "Link a related branch" in a very obtrusive location

I think that would be more reasonable. The space immediately below the
description, if it has actions at all, should be reserved for the most
commonly used actions and not the least.

Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

This is an interesting problem. Branches are used much less often for distribution bugs than for project bugs, because most distribution packages currently aren't managed in Bazaar. Work on changing that has begun in Intrepid, though it will take a while.

When a bug report does have related branches, however, the list of branches is more important than the comments. So the list goes above the comments, therefore that's where the "Link related branch" link goes even when there aren't related branches.

I have several other changes in progress that will reduce clutter and make Launchpad easier to use on small screens. In one of them, "Link to CVE" will no longer take up a whole vertical line if there are no existing CVE links; that will reduce the distance between the description and the comments.

Changed in launchpad:
assignee: nobody → mpt
Revision history for this message
Deryck Hodge (deryck) wrote :

I'm calling this fixed for now, since the link is in a side portlet. It could return to somewhere on the report where the linked branches will appear (see bug 504611). But I assume it's more relevant now for Ubuntu given the use of bzr currently.

If the link returns and it's still a problem, this bug can be reopened to New and we can reconsider the issue then.

Cheers,
deryck

Changed in malone:
status: New → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
cc (codecrumb) wrote :

Just adding a note that "Link related branch" is not immediately obvious on usage.

In this bug report (not submitted by me), you can see that Precise is linked as an affected branch.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssl/+bug/986147

I'm trying to do the same for the following bug.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssl/+bug/940230

And if I try to type "Precise" into the search box, all it does is return a message of too many results. This is very frustrating.

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