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Home » Eclipse Projects » Marketplace Client Project » UI Feedback: Why modal Dialog?
UI Feedback: Why modal Dialog? [message #560283] Sat, 10 April 2010 16:02 Go to next message
Tom Seidel is currently offline Tom SeidelFriend
Messages: 91
Registered: July 2009
Member
The UI is already known from Mylyn for installing additional components, like repository connectors. For Mylyn I think the approach for a single modal dialog is very good, for the Eclipse Marketplace, where currently over 1000 solutions are registered a modal dialog is not the right choice.

The proposal of this project mentions an eclipse based client, probably I've overlooked something, but which additional elements, except the Marketplace Dialog will be included?

The browsing experience is currently not good. The fact that the description is only available via a popup makes fast switching from one description to another impossible. I couldn't find also features that will improve the browsing experience, like adding a marker to a solution or adding additional personal nodes.

What is also very annoying that on every tab-switching the client contacts marketplace for information that should be already available.

But for me the most interesting question is: Why is the MPC not designed like a normal application, with a perspective, a viewpart for listing all the solutions and editorparts for a single solution with detailed description, screenshot and install-actions or a search that is integrated in the eclipse search dialog?

Maybe some of the missing functionalities are not implemented yet, but I'm afraid, that for a targetted installation of a solution the current approach is perfect, but for browsing and looking for cool new solutions the current ui is not made for.

Could you explain why you have chosen the current ui style, probably I've overlooked something or misunderstood the proposal and the purpose of the project..

Cheerz
Tom
Re: UI Feedback: Why modal Dialog? [message #560289 is a reply to message #560283] Mon, 12 April 2010 14:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
David Green is currently offline David GreenFriend
Messages: 96
Registered: July 2009
Member
Tom,

Thanks for your post and questions. Please find my comments below:

On 10-04-10 9:02 AM, Tom Seidel wrote:
> The UI is already known from Mylyn for installing additional components,
> like repository connectors. For Mylyn I think the approach for a single
> modal dialog is very good, for the Eclipse Marketplace, where currently
> over 1000 solutions are registered a modal dialog is not the right choice.

I agree that a modal dialog is somewhat limiting. A modal dialog also presents a very simple interface that is easy to
use even for those not familiar with the Eclipse platform. The current design was selected based on many other factors,
such as providing a consistent UI between Mylyn Discovery, p2 Discovery and the Marketplace client. Another major
consideration was code reuse and the tight timeframe in which MPC had to be delivered (making the Helios release train
was a priority).

> The proposal of this project mentions an eclipse based client, probably
> I've overlooked something, but which additional elements, except the
> Marketplace Dialog will be included?

Integration with the Welcome page, a menu item under 'help', and integrated help content are also included.

> The browsing experience is currently not good. The fact that the
> description is only available via a popup makes fast switching from one
> description to another impossible.

Displaying multiple listings with short descriptions is designed to make it easy to find what you want. If solution
providers do a good job with their short descriptions it should make the need to drill down to the long description less
frequent.

> I couldn't find also features that
> will improve the browsing experience, like adding a marker to a solution
> or adding additional personal nodes.

We're currently looking at ways to integrate MPC with the website. We intend to make it easier to use the website in
conjunction with the MPC wizard. Ideas we're exploring include a way to indicate favorites and an install button on the
website itself.

I'm not sure what you mean by adding personal nodes. Can you elaborate?

> What is also very annoying that on every tab-switching the client
> contacts marketplace for information that should be already available.

This is no different than interacting with the website. As you've mentioned the marketplace can contain thousands of
solutions, so we cannot download the entire catalog. What aspect of this do you find annoying?

> But for me the most interesting question is: Why is the MPC not designed
> like a normal application, with a perspective, a viewpart for listing
> all the solutions and editorparts for a single solution with detailed
> description, screenshot and install-actions or a search that is
> integrated in the eclipse search dialog?

This kind of application may be normal from an Eclipse perspective, however the target user base may not be familiar
with the Eclipse platform and concepts such as perspectives. Having multiple views and editors in a perspective
provides a very flexible UI that is suitable for power users, but comes with the cost of complexity. As this is the
first cut at integrating the marketplace within Eclipse, a simple UI was a priority.

> Maybe some of the missing functionalities are not implemented yet, but
> I'm afraid, that for a targetted installation of a solution the current
> approach is perfect, but for browsing and looking for cool new solutions
> the current ui is not made for.

The MPC wizard is not intended to replace the the website. The website provides a much different experience including
favorites, tagging, etc. Does that suit your needs?

> Could you explain why you have chosen the current ui style, probably
> I've overlooked something or misunderstood the proposal and the purpose
> of the project..

I hope that I've answered your questions, and thanks for raising these issues. Keep in mind that this is the first cut
at a challenging integration. The project's priority of making the Helios release train has driven much of what you see.

MPC is an open source project and we'd gladly entertain contributions of any kind, including this kind of feedback, bug
submissions, patches, code, and of course committers!

> Cheerz
> Tom
Re: UI Feedback: Why modal Dialog? [message #569379 is a reply to message #560283] Sun, 02 May 2010 10:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Tom Seidel is currently offline Tom SeidelFriend
Messages: 91
Registered: July 2009
Member
David,

thanks for your detailed clarification.

> Displaying multiple listings with short descriptions is
> designed to make it easy to find what you want.
> If solution providers do a good job with their short
> descriptions it should make the need to drill down
> to the long description less frequent.

Hm, I doubt this will be the case, if I look at the current plugin listings, I see only a few which can described in one or two sentence.

> We intend to make it easier to use the website in
> conjunction with the MPC wizard
Good to hear.

> I'm not sure what you mean by adding personal nodes.
> Can you elaborate?

I think a quite common usecase is to add additional personal nodes to a listing. For example I make some notes like "could be interesting for project X" or "John says that is plugin is too buggy" for several listings.

> This is no different than interacting with the website.
> As you've mentioned the marketplace can contain
> thousands of solutions, so we cannot download
> the entire catalog

c'mon :) Loading once the entire catalog in the background and afterwards only the deltas would be much better than loading every on request, The marketplace site is not the fastest one (at least here in Germany) so the repeating downloading of information I requested 2 click before is really annoying. At least a user-preference for downloading the catalog could solve this problem.

> Having multiple views and editors in a perspective
> provides a very flexible UI that is suitable for power users,
> but comes with the cost of complexity. As this is the
> first cut at integrating the marketplace within Eclipse,
> a simple UI was a priority.

Ok, makes sense. Some month ago the Eclipse Remus project has developed some integration for Marketplace, where you cannot install something, but the browsing experience is much better, you'll find a blog posting regarding that at http://bit.ly/4yqgcQ

> The MPC wizard is not intended to replace the the website

I agree, but some overlapping would be really appreciated, especially for browsing...

Thanks again for your clarification
Tom
Re: UI Feedback: Why modal Dialog? [message #569430 is a reply to message #569379] Wed, 05 May 2010 15:19 Go to previous message
David Green is currently offline David GreenFriend
Messages: 96
Registered: July 2009
Member
Thomas,

You'll find many improvements in the latest version of MPC which will be released soon as part of Elicpse 3.6M7. MPC
now has many usability fixes, integration with the Marketplace website, and some performance fixes too.

Some more comments below:

On 10-05-02 3:43 AM, Tom Seidel wrote:
> David,
>
> thanks for your detailed clarification.
> ... snip ...
>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by adding personal nodes. Can you elaborate?
>
> I think a quite common usecase is to add additional personal nodes to a
> listing. For example I make some notes like "could be interesting for
> project X" or "John says that is plugin is too buggy" for several listings.

Please submit a bug for any enhancements that you'd like to see.

>> This is no different than interacting with the website. As you've
>> mentioned the marketplace can contain thousands of solutions, so we
>> cannot download the entire catalog
>
> c'mon :) Loading once the entire catalog in the background and
> afterwards only the deltas would be much better than loading every on
> request, The marketplace site is not the fastest one (at least here in
> Germany) so the repeating downloading of information I requested 2 click
> before is really annoying. At least a user-preference for downloading
> the catalog could solve this problem.

The latest MPC should be much better in this regard. It has some client-side caching, so clicking between tabs should
be much more responsive.

> ...
>
>> The MPC wizard is not intended to replace the the website
>
> I agree, but some overlapping would be really appreciated, especially
> for browsing...

Links in the MPC wizard bring up an integrated Marketplace website. The website displays Install buttons on solutions
where it can, and clicking these links starts the install process via MPC.

Best regards,

David
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