[mantisbt-dev] Proposal for new design

[Oskar B. <osk...@gm...>]

Hi,

(EDIT: I'm resending this mail without the attachment, as my previous
attempt has been stuck in moderators queue for several days now.
Please see issue 12339 for the illustration.)


I believe that the current mantis design in many regards is
experienced as cluttered and difficult to read. Therefore I've
sketched a new design (for the "view bug" page only at this time).
This can still probably be improved in many ways, but it's a start.

I've created issue 12339 for this, but this matter should maybe be
discussed on the mailing list.

Quote from the issue description:

Everything is in a grid layout - related gui features are not
necessarily close together. E.g. in "view bug", the
platform/os/osversion fields are spread out across the entire width of
the screen.

To many line boxes make the design appear cluttered - especially when
the content of each box is missing or very small. E.g. see a bug with
only a little information, the relationship/send files/watchers boxes
will turn into just a bunch of lines.

It should be possible to prioritise the fields better than in the
current design. Some fields, like e.g. severity/status/resolution
might be regarded as more important than e.g. the platform and the
list of watchers (for most users most of the time).


Attached is a design sketch showing some ideas for a new layout of the
view bug page. (The regular mantis header still applies above it.)

This layout is based on the following idea:

* Not every field must necessarily be explicitly named (e.g. the
platform section shows the content of platform/os/osversion as one
string.)

* Give more weight to the primary properties. (What is primary may be
open to opinion of course.)

* More secondary fields are off to the right, in a column of their own.

* Putting secondary fields to the right, allows description, messages,
etc. in the main column to appear higher up on the page.

* Some of the action buttons that are redundant with the generic
"modify bug"-button are removed. If people really want these button,
it should be possible to put them back in the "Action"-section.

* Color coding for e.g. status and other important values is possible,
but not shown in the sketch.


/Oskar