The Packages feature is new, but already kinda forgotten, it’s still very rough in some areas, the Mass Update interface is one of them.
Before i start something unrelated to the redesign itself, but just as important:
- The Window is named Mass Update, but the drop down option on a Package is called Update All, this is extremely misleading and inconsistent, even if nothing else about this post is seen as an important change, at least this should change, since it’s just a localization change.
The current interface has the following design “problems”:
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Too much wasted space.
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Selection boxes that take over the entire screen
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Dividers that don’t divide anything
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Not having a Scroll bar, thus, having to rescale the window itself to interact with all places.
(9 places is already pushing the limit on default window size, on a 32’’ Monitor) -
If you click a single pixel out of the “Cancel” or “Update” buttons, you’ll interact with the place selection for the place on the clicks Y level.
(this is the thing that made me want to make this post, got 100 mass updates for this package alone, done that at least 10% of the time, only noticing it after already clicking upload, making me having to do it again multiple times.)
My opinion on the current design and it’s problems:
My proposed for a Redesign:
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Less wasted space.
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Scrollbar, obviously.
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Increased amount of places listed on the X Axis. (could be 2-3, but definitively not 1)
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Faint Grid lines around a place, anything to represent it’s actual selection zone.
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Quantities not represented visually in my example, but grid would optimally be a 8x3, with places going from Left to Right, Up to Down, as is the only way to work with a vertically scrollable grid.
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Using an 8x3 default size, there could be some spacing between the Grid items.
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Bottom Divider actually is a divider, the Grid and the Bottom Divider don’t overlap.
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The “Update all copies in a place” text is technically wrong, it only updates packages which haven’t been modified, other than that, the Mass Update’s function purpose should already be clear to anyone using it, since it’s not like you can select also select which individual packages are updating, so it’s either 0% updates or 100% updates, and since “no updates” makes no sense in an update function… it’s pretty clear it’s the only option, it’s also the only reason why anyone would click it, why else if not to update all? The text is misleading at worse and irrelevant at best, so i just removed it.
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The System would benefit from saving the last update list for each package, it’s a big QOL for packages which get lots of updates, but only to specific places, but it’s not really necessary.
My rough redesign proposal:
I hope this post achieves something, but even if it doesn’t, thanks for taking the time to read it.