On Mon, 2021-02-01 at 12:31 +0100, Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:

On 2/1/21 12:15 PM, Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:

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[...] Should we consider something beyond writing a blog post and linking to it? Maybe some video?

If we do a video or something similar. Should it really be about the differences with the classic UI or should we just do a general presentation of all the YaST Partitioner functionality, just like if it was new? I think the latter would be more useful.

I agree, the latter would be better.

Maybe we should ask for help from other (open)SUSE teams, like documentation or marketing.

Cheers.

-- -- David Díaz YaST Team at SUSE LINUX GmbH IRC: dgdavid

On 2/1/21 12:48 PM, Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:

On 2/1/21 12:15 PM, Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:

...

[...]

That opens a question - what can we do to prevent our users to get lost in the new UI? For me, that actually splits in two questions:

1) What can we adjust in the UI to make the transition smoother and/or to improve usability in general?

In this regard, maybe we should reconsider the approach of our current help texts in the Partitioner. When the users clicks on "help" they get a description about the content of the particular table that is currently on the screen and about the columns it contains. That's for sure useful but there is no general explanation, in the Help button or anywhere else, about how the whole Partitioner UI is organized. Nothing mentions the menu or the left tree. No way to get a general overview on how to navigate the UI.

I tried to fix that with new help texts. Please check and provide feedback https://github.com/yast/yast-storage-ng/pull/1208

Or maybe all that is irrelevant because nobody uses the help anyways. I don't know.

Or maybe we could have such explanation accessible through a different more prominent button than the Help one (which I feel has become part of the general landscape and nobody sees it anymore)...

I have been playing with the idea of a more powerful help dialog that can contain hyperlinks to additional content (like a "guided tour") or similar fancy stuff. But I discarded it for the time being. See the thread "The YaST Wizard and the help pop-up" in this same ML. https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/yast-devel@lists.opensuse.org/threa... Cheers. -- Ancor González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE Software Solutions

On 2/1/21 2:34 PM, Sasi Olin wrote:

Am Mo, 1. Feb, 2021 um 12:15 P. M. schrieb Ancor Gonzalez Sosa :

...

That opens a question - what can we do to prevent our users to get lost in the new UI? For me, that actually splits in two questions:

1) What can we adjust in the UI to make the transition smoother and/or to improve usability in general?

I really think the new UI is an improvement, however I do have a few small gripes I guess: * I don't really see the value of "All Devices" view, the sidebar does  its job there

We have discussed that several times and we decided to keep it for "backwards compatibility". That is, not changing too much at a time. We could indeed consider killing the "All Devices" entry of the tree or maybe just killing the tree and replacing it with some kind of filter. But all that seemed like going too far in just one iteration. Let's say that would be phase 2. ;-)

* In case a user has only one device, why not automatically select it as  the main view * It's impossible to tell the disks apart in the sidebar: users  recognize their disks by the size and the disk make/manufacturer, not  by a randomly assigned drive letter, and a sub suggestion to that:  * I know 2 lines instead of one there may be controversial, but also    maybe think about it, since it could make it more readable if    implemented correctly (though a nightmare for people with hundreds    of disks, view option?)

Good point.

* Does it make sense to show the disk itself in the view if an user has  selected a disk in a sidebar already (this may break with context  menubar stuff?)

That was a conscious decision that actually brings a lot of consistency to the whole UI. It may not be obvious at first, but try to kill that first line and then come up with an organization of the menus that makes obvious sense in all situations. It's not so easy. Moreover, that first line serves as some kind of "title" to give context to the whole list of partitions. That approach also ensures partitions are always displayed as nested elements of the disk and never as stand-alone elements. That also improves consistency a lot. And last but not least, that first line saves the users from too much jumping in the UI if they want to find actions that affect the whole disk.

* Does the user have to go to the $device-type view (where $device-type  is raid, lvm, bcache, etc.) to add the type of device, maybe it would  be better if the sidebar had "Add $device_type" if there are 0 of a  given type of device (add device on the menubar? add device under the  sidebar?)

Actually that's one of the problems that are solved by this new UI. Is not needed anymore to go to the RAID section to create a RAID. The Add menu is always there and it always allows to create a RAID, LVM, bcache, etc. No matter in which screen you currently are. We just kept the corresponding (now redundant) "Add Whatever" buttons on each section for backwards compatibility because we assumed some users would report a bug if they didn't find them there.

* The $device_type name in the sidebar is a title, it would make sense  for it to be relatively small, which icons definitely break, maybe it  would be wiser to have icon on the devices and not the titles of the  groups to make them stand out better

Maybe. This goes again to the sidebar (or filter) discussion we want to have in the future, after the users are finally used to use the menu and the nested tables. Phase 2, do you remember? ;-)

...

2) What can we do to communicate the change better to all possible users?

https://github.com/openSUSE/news-o-o is fairly easy to contribute to, considering yast.opensuse.org works more or less the same way ;)

Sure, getting the content there will not be any problem if we agree that's the way to go.

...

The Partitioner is not the only part of YaST under heavy revamping, so whatever are the answers I expect them to be useful in general for YaST.

It is a big change and it's very appreciated all things considered, I may want to make some changes to how things look now though to make it better looking beyond just UX changes ;)

Cool! Cheers. -- Ancor González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE Linux GmbH

On 2/22/21 7:36 AM, Felix Miata wrote:

Ancor Gonzalez Sosa composed on 2021-02-01 12:15 (UTC+0100):

[...]

Very much missed are the instantly available at the bottom left: summary and settings, where I would always change mounting default to by LABEL and type to EXT4, and double check before proceeding from partitioning to next step that I made no serious typos or omissions. I loath having to choose to click a back button, which in the past more than once has caused all my work to that point to be discarded.

I don't get the part about pressing a back button here. Now both "Settings" and "Installation Summary" are displayed with a pop-up dialog that is closed with an ok button. No back button involved.

[...] OT: At the very least, give some contrast to the bottom right buttons. Gray on off-white is merely bothersome. Off-white on pale green is very poor. The green is so pale that black would be better than pure white. It looks as if its contrast has been reduced as often happens when some other action is required before it can be selected.

For changes in the installer theming I guess it would be better to reach out to LCP or maybe some other mailing list, but I'm not sure which one. -- Ancor González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE Software Solutions