#14598 closed bug (fixed)
[HaikuDepot] disable Show only featured packages on search
| Reported by: | diver | Owned by: | stippi |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | normal | Milestone: | R1/beta2 |
| Component: | Applications/HaikuDepot | Version: | R1/Development |
| Keywords: | Cc: | ||
| Blocked By: | Blocking: | ||
| Platform: | All |
Description
Beta1.
Even knowing about this checkbox all too well I was beaten by this. I tried to install Telegram using freshly installed 32bit Haiku and couldn't find it. Then I realised it's probably was the checkbox. I know there were a lot of complains that people couldn't find software because of this.
Long story short, let's disable featured packages on search.
Attachments (2)
Change History (19)
follow-up: 3 comment:1 by , 6 years ago
comment:3 by , 6 years ago
Replying to stippi:
Grrr... as far as I remember, that is exactly the behavior I previously had implemented. For exactly this reason, searching temporarily disabled "Show only featured packages". I don't remember the details of why it was changed. It was deemed more consistent?
The discussion on this subject happened long ago... Anyway, wouldn't it be better to have a separate view where featured packages are shown, instead of a checkbox ? In RedHat/CentOS, for example, the installer application shows the featured packages on start, but when you search, it presents the results as a different view.
comment:4 by , 6 years ago
In the "searching" screenshot, it seems as if no tab/view is selected.
I remember a bit more on the discussion. IIRC, the checkbox was also moved from the menu directly onto the surface. After all, the contents are controlled by a lot of options, basically all the options above the list control the contents, and act like filters. Searching is just another filter on top. You could ask, why should you not be able to search for packages only among the featured packages. However, there could be a button at the end of the list "Search all available packages". Or something like "Show 5 non-featured results"...
comment:5 by , 6 years ago
First off, with the checkbox in plain view and its label and the consequences when it's enabled/disabled it is perfectly logical and consistant. Ignoring the checkbox setting (or menu setting before it was implemented as checkbox) when some search term is entered, just is not.
That said, I understand that people may just overlook that setting anyway. I'm all for separating out the featured packages, maybe into a second tab in the window. One tab for "All packages" one for "Featured packages". Both with the same filter bar on top, categories and search terms.
comment:6 by , 5 years ago
That would also be too confusing.
As far as I can tell, virtually everyone overlooks this option or thinks it does not affect searching, probably because of the behavior of things like the Ubuntu appstore and the like. There are some reviews of beta1 which think there is no office suite because LibreOffice was not in the featured list.
We need to stick with the simplest solution, which will be to ignore the featured packages setting on search. Perhaps introduce some sorting so featured packages appear on top of a search, but not that they are the only thing.
comment:7 by , 5 years ago
That would also be too confusing.
How could a separate tab "Featured packages" be confusing?
I still stand by it. Having a checkbox that says "Only show featured packages" and then show all packages if someone searches for something is completely wrong.
comment:8 by , 5 years ago
IIRC, the current behavior was for consistency. As stippi says, technically all these things are just filters.
However, I prefer to think of this in terms of use cases. There are basically two use cases here:
- Either you know what you're looking for, and you will enter keywords (package name or thing like "office suite" or "vector graphics editor" or ...) in the search bar.
- Or, you are just glancing at available packages, in which case you will just browse through the list. In this second case, a "featured packages" system makes sense.
So yes, technically the search bar and "featured packages" are both implemented as filters. But why would you want to search in featured packages? This is combining something you know you are looking for (search keywords) with something you don't control (featured packages - it is not obvious at all how a package becomes "featured")
I think we should make it more clear what the user is seeing, and try to apply the principle of least surprise as usual. IIRC I already suggested this in the previous discussion, but it was dismissed on the grounds of "too much work to change the user interface that way" or something similar. I think since we have two different use cases, we should not try to blend them into a single UI widget. I would go with a "home page" with different partial views on packages ("recent updates", "featured", "trending", "most downloaded", whatever), and an obviously separate search bar. Entering something in the search bar shoud then move into a "list" mode to show the results, and possibly allow to perform more complex searches (basically, this would be similar to the UI we have now)
comment:9 by , 5 years ago
Then we can gray out the checkbox when searching.
Tabs are just as confusing as the checkbox is -- actually potentially more so, from my experience with Muon Package Manager from KDE.
comment:10 by , 5 years ago
I agree with both humdinger and PulkoMandy somewhat. humdinger is correct in comment 7. The simple solution for now, is to uncheck the "featured packages" box by default, and fix this bug: https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/13940. This way all packages are presented to the user on first launch of the app, and they can choose to check "featured packages" optionally.
follow-ups: 12 14 comment:11 by , 5 years ago
That doesn't make much sense either. Very few users know about the featured packages check box, so they won't check it ever, rendering it useless.
Leaving it checked by default and then marking it disabled when searching is what makes the most sense here.
comment:12 by , 5 years ago
First time users will not know about the featured packages checkbox, nor anything else about Haiku. If they are presented with the full list, and see we have more then 9 packages to offer, they might be inclined to explore further. Maybe they'll stick around longer and find the featured packages checkbox, as well as all the other hiddden gems.
Replying to waddlesplash:
That doesn't make much sense either. Very few users know about the featured packages check box, so they won't check it ever, rendering it useless.
Leaving it checked by default and then marking it disabled when searching is what makes the most sense here.
comment:13 by , 5 years ago
Almost all of the packages other than the featured 9 are libraries the end user should neither know nor care about. We need to fix the refresh issue, but we should leave the featured packages checkbox as is.
comment:14 by , 5 years ago
Replying to waddlesplash:
Very few users know about the featured packages check box, so they won't check it ever, rendering it useless.
I find that hard to believe. It's starring them right in the face at the top in the middle of the window. By that argument the users will also never 'discover' the categories popup or search box.
Leaving it checked by default and then marking it disabled when searching is what makes the most sense here.
It's surely the easiest to 'fix' this way. Generally, I agree with PulkoMandy that the concept of how to present featured packages should change. Personally I'd be good with going with tabs (which I just cannot be confused about). It symbolizes two sides of HaikuDepot that can differ wrt widgets, behaviour and presentation: Featured and All packages.
Replying to pulkomandy:
But why would you want to search in featured packages?
Just a personal preference. If I have a list of 50 featured packages, I rather type e.g. "spreadsheet" instead of find and set the right category and browse the filtered list.
comment:15 by , 5 years ago
Searching in featured packages seems like a perfectly valid use-case to me. Maybe "featured" is not the ideal name for it, "recommended" could be better. In any case, if I search for "text editor" maybe I want to see only the "recommended" or "featured" results.
That being said, I could see how Humdingers proposal works in practice. One could have two top-level tabs, where the "featured" tab also has a much reduced UI, with only a search field and nothing else. And all the additional filters are on the All packages tab. One could of course synchronize the two search fields.
comment:16 by , 5 years ago
| Resolution: | → fixed |
|---|---|
| Status: | new → closed |
Resolved by switching to tabs in hrev52449.
comment:17 by , 4 years ago
| Milestone: | Unscheduled → R1/beta2 |
|---|
Assign tickets with status=closed and resolution=fixed within the R1/beta2 development window to the R1/beta2 Milestone
Grrr... as far as I remember, that is exactly the behavior I previously had implemented. For exactly this reason, searching temporarily disabled "Show only featured packages". I don't remember the details of why it was changed. It was deemed more consistent?