[ZF] Re: Use launchpad ! (was Re: [Zope3-dev] the maintenance of change logs)

[Jeff Shell]

On 9/29/06, Steve Alexander <steve at canonical.com> wrote:
>
> >> On a small aesthetics side, I find Launchpad's side bars incredibly
> >> distracting, and I don't like looking at the page because it feels
> >> like there are too many things vying for my attention and I have a
> >> hard time really reading the text in front of me. The content gets
> >> squished. And then I find myself looking at all of these links and
> >> buttons around the page trying to figure out what has the information
> >> I'm interested in. The sidebar on Zope.org bothers me in the same way
> >> when I try to read the Zope 3 wiki - but Zope.org feels nowhere near
> >> as noisy as Launchpad. I'm sure their tools are great, and the hosting
> >> service is a good feature.
>
> I understand what you're saying about the Launchpad UI, and I agree with it.
>
> There's a significant re-design of the Launchpad UI underway right now
> that ought to address many of these issues.  It won't be on the live
> site for a couple of months, though.

I see that you have Matthew P Thomas involved. I know he's had some
good writings in the past about usability and consistency.

And after looking at `help.launchpad.net` really quickly, I now
realize the big seller for Launchpad: bug tracking across multiple
projects. With all of the little Zope things out there (zc.catalog,
zc.buildout, etc), it would be good to be able to share such data
between them. Actually, this is an issue that my very small company
runs into frequently - needing to focus on specific projects while
also keeping an eye on the underlying tools and frameworks. So many
other systems seem suited for just-one-project-at-a-time, and it's
frustrating to try to keep track of issues four layers down from
customer-specific code.

So: I really like Launchpad's goals and intentions. But its a
usability nightmare to me as a casual visitor. And I've found that for
me, personally, it's hard to stay involved with or on top of a project
in that situation, especially when I'm stressed out (like I have been
the past few days). I look forward to seeing the re-design.

-- 
Jeff Shell