Difference between revisions of "Equinox p2 UIWG Walkthrough"

Revision as of 18:23, 19 June 2008

p2 UI Walkthrough Eclipse UI Best Practices Working Group 6/25/2008

Prep/Homework

The discussion will be the most productive if the participants are already familiar with both the Eclipse Update Manager UI and the p2 UI.

• Equinox p2 UM workflows shows the scenarios in the Eclipse Update Manager that were used to set goals for improving the user experience.
• Equinox p2 User Interface shows the same scenarios in the new p2 UI and compares aspects of the design to the UM design.

Discussion Topics

• Are we ready to tweak/fix problems in the current UI or do we need to step back and reexamine the overall organization and metaphor?
  • Is "browsing" vs. task-oriented "search" wizard a better metaphor for finding content (esp. given performance issues, user wait time)?
  • Does eliminating modality improve the metaphor?
  • Is the juxtaposition of "installed" and "available" working?

• Big problem areas and possible solutions
  • Too much repo management forced on user
    • Presentation of large numbers of repositories for browsing
    • Selection of repositories for updating (solution might be to do smart picking for the user)
  • Unfolding of detail for installation contents
    • Is a tree view the best presentation for selectively exposing detail about the installed software?

• Specific UI improvements that could be made (style-guide type issues: wording, button organization, etc.)
• Other update UIs that are done well

Detailed References

• Equinox p2 UI Plan
• Update Manager and p2 Compatibility