UI module owner

[Gervase Markham]

Benton, Kevin wrote:
> From a technical perspective, I agree.  From a usability perspective, I
> disagree completely.  When a page is overly full, it becomes unusable.
> If that weren't the case, then we would need sites like Google.

As a usability point, I don't think that's always true. For example, a
50-question survey on a single page is arguably more usable than 10
5-question pages, because the user isn't distracted with paging all the
time.

The question is: if you think that Bugzilla's default view of a bug is
"overly full", is hiding 80% of the fields at any one time the correct
solution?

> I want the "most critical information"
> available in that first screen.  Users that want more than the most
> critical information, can scroll down or select tabs depending on the
> application.

I agree, to an extent. Currently, they scroll down. You are proposing a
switch to tabs. I suggest that the latter requires much more work to get
a picture of the entire bug's state than the former.

> I think what Byron is getting at is there are times when it's
> appropriate for us to give the user more of a dashboard look at what
> they user is interested in.  For example (here at AMD), when the user
> first hits Bugzilla, they're typically interested in the results of the
> "my bugs" query, along with some kind of information describing new bugs
> to that user, and some overall product statistics.

I agree there are sometimes uses for that type of view; but that fact
doesn't have much relationship to the question of what the default view
of a bug should be.

> While I'm not a big fan of RT, I think they've done a good job of
> helping the user see a clear division between the "most commonly used
> fields" and others.

Do you have a screenshot of RT?

> I'm on the fence about this one for the moment.  Tabs would be "less
> pretty" but they would work for WAP and browsers that don't support CSS
> block:hide;  

Er, what about display: none? That hides blocks fine.

> On the other hand, I believe the majority of users would
> rather see the collapsible fields than tabs.  I'm also thinking that
> giving the user the ability to re-order fields would be helpful for
> those that can.  

Why do you think this ability is necessary in addition to the other
abilities? Do your other proposals not solve the problem?

Gerv