On 31/01/13 22:00, Tom Kitchin wrote:
Hi,
I've been following along in the discussion and I've been encouraged to
weigh in, so I've just spent a bit of time playing with the ticket layout,
and my thoughts are below.
My first thought is that the scroll spy doesn't really suit the layout, as
has been suggested - on my laptop at least it takes up a considerable
amount of screen estate without providing much value - the ticket itself
simply isn't long enough to warrant it. As has also already been noted,
the "Modify ticket" button also functions differently from the line of
similarly styled buttons next to it. It might work better if the Modify
ticket button was visibly separated from the positional buttons, and became
the Update/Submit/whatever button when in edit mode instead of having the
"Update (leave)" button above it. This would cut back on the size of the
spy a bit without losing functionality. The length of the change history
isn't a problem if the spy is kept this way, as well - collapsing it
strikes me as a bit clunky.
I think there's a strange overlap on changes to comments. I agree that any
change should allow for leaving a comment with it, but then we have a
section called "Change history" in the page but "Comments" in the spy, and
the "Submit changes" button being used to submit a comment even if you're
not in edit mode. We should encourage discussion of tickets where
relevant, so making commentary without change easy would be best, I think.
Perhaps just reducing the "Submit changes" text of the button under the
comments box to "Submit" would be enough of a change there? I suspect that
a comments box on a ticket with "Submit changes" under it would make me
nervous, while just "Submit" reads as submitting a comment when commenting
and submitting changes when editing. Similarly, the Comments navigation
button could read "History" instead, which I think also carries a dual
meaning which will make sense to people looking for past comments and
people looking for the change history.
I think accept/reassign/resolve should be buttons outside of edit mode, and
should act immediately rather than need submitting. If they're a set of
actual buttons their purpose and immediate effect is completely clear,
while embedding them in the Update button dropdown is confusing. Unless
you check the dropdown, what does "Update (leave)" mean, anyway?
Tom
Sorry I have taken so long to consider this. And thanks for the great
feedback Tom!
The accept/reassign/resolve actions still really require a submit
action, particularly as we want to be able to leave a comment on the
associated event. Even with the case of accepting a ticket, it is not
clear cut that a comment would not be required even if it is less
likely. Also, keeping these state changes together with other ticket
edits seems better to me so that one comment can cover any important
things that need to be said about the changes as a whole.
The only area where I think that there is an excuse for immediate
submission would be things like ticket watching if we are happy that
such things should not end up being a part of the ticket history.
Cheers,
Gary
