RE: Unified appearance of Comments-tab and History-tab

Mick Semb Wever wrote:

>This was quite a large UI change without any warning to the development 
>list!

Ok, I should have warned you. This is one of the changes which start as a small adjustment and grow into something bigger.
Fortunately we can revert it, if we want. ;)

>I like most of it but am definitely against 
>
>> - Unified appearance of Comments-tab and History-tab.
>
>Is it possible to revert just this?
>The history table was better in my opinion, although avoiding duplicate 
>information between history and comment columns in the one row is smart.

Hmm, in fact I like this one most.
Most of the data in the history is profiting from more horizontal screen space.
Each attribute-change fits in one line, at least mostly.
The layout of the comments and reasons is preserved.
Both makes the history more readable imo.
There is also less screen-space wasted in otherwise empty columns, which means more of the history fits on the screen.

>I find that this isn't a page that i read verbosely (unlike the comments tab). 
>Rather it's a page that i'm looking for one particular change via author or datestamp and >the history/comment associated with it. That is i'm cross-relating the fields in the >changes. For this reason to have the various fields separated in columns allows the eye >to scan and find quicker.

You mean cross-relating author/datestamp with comment/reason, or cross-relating author/datestamp with changes of specific attributes?

>On Tue, 27 May 2008 14:47:28 +0200, Johannes Hoechstaedter wrote:
>> Some history entries weren't readable.
>
>Honestly, which one do you find more readable?
>or maybe i'm just going senile?

Ok, in your screenshots it seems pretty obvious.
But your comparison is a bit unfair:

You are using different histories in the two Screenshots, each one supporting your argumentation, a high screen-resolution and a small font.

Use a history with long reasons and some changes in long-text-attributes, maybe containing some structured text like a code-snippet or a stack-trace. 
Switch to a slightly lower screen-resolution and a larger font.
Now compare again.

>Unfortunate that the screenshot of the new history tab contained only "Added comment..." >entries (which the new history tab is intended to cator for!) so i added the next screen >(under complete history) as well.

Ok, fairer, but still a little bit biased.

I think it's more a style-issue, not an issue of the structure of the history.
And here I confess, I did a horrible job. I'm open for suggestions.
I definitely don't want four columns as they are in b21.
Maybe the two-columns version which was in the trunk before my commit.
But I still prefer the one-column version.

Btw. all the popular Trackers I have used or tested (like Bugzilla, Jira, Mantis, Trac,FogBugz,...) have some kind of one-column history. I don’t think they're all wrong. (And I don’t think this is a good unique selling point for Scarab.)

Ronny