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Usability enhancements

Open fbender opened this issue 12 years ago • 30 comments

To improve readability of the list, I propose to:

  • [x] Drop/hide obsolete browsers, e. g. Firefox <17 (Fx 17 is ESR, so it will be around for at least a few months), Chrome <21 (usage numbers are near-zero or actually zero).
  • [ ] Make columns hideable (so one can only display the columns he is interested in). This can be achieved with a small JS (which I'm happy to provide, but it may take some time before I can get to it).
  • [x] Highlight current row (and, if possible, column) on mouseover.
  • [x] A way to unfocus browser, by clicking on the focused browser again
  • [x] Separate browser+versions into 2 headers
  • [x] Fixed header
  • [ ] Replace bottom notes with inline tooltips (for convenience)
  • [x] Expand subtests by clicking on entire cell (except link) not just "down" arrow

fbender avatar Jul 16 '13 08:07 fbender

@fbender All good suggestions and all of these I've been planning to do in a near future!

kangax avatar Jul 16 '13 20:07 kangax

@fbender If you're still interested in tackling these, I'd be happy to pull them in. Otherwise, I'll try to get to this within a month or so.

kangax avatar Sep 22 '13 18:09 kangax

I'll have a look at it this week, however may not finish until the end of next week (depending on other work). If I don't report here, feel free to take over!

fbender avatar Sep 22 '13 20:09 fbender

Sounds good.

On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Florian Bender [email protected]:

I'll have a look at it this week, however may not finish until the end of next week (depending on other work). If I don't report here, feel free to take over!

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/kangax/es5-compat-table/issues/75#issuecomment-24890439 .

kangax avatar Sep 22 '13 21:09 kangax

I have a minimal (somewhat dirty) fix at https://github.com/fbender/es5-compat-table/commits/es6-ux – do you agree with the course I take? Should I do something else?

No PR yet, because this fix would benefit from a refactoring, and it does not include item 2 (hiding arbitrary columns) & 3 (highlight current row/column) mentioned above.

Edit: Also, I only did minimal testing in Firefox, though this should work in "modern" browsers incl. IE9 (IE8 may need a script to make the checkbox work). I don't know if the results get skewed because of the hiding, either.

fbender avatar Sep 24 '13 19:09 fbender

@fbender Yes, I think it looks reasonable, although I already have a way of hiding old browsers in ES5 table. Not sure if you've seen — https://github.com/kangax/es5-compat-table/blob/gh-pages/master.css#L40-L46 It's purely presentational and done in CSS.

kangax avatar Sep 27 '13 19:09 kangax

Yeah, I saw that while I was already coding. I decided to keep my approach as it separates the data, logic, and appearance. This allows for only updating the data file and nothing else, and everything works as expected. As you can see, there's only an extra field in the JSON (obsolete == (true || false)) which lets the build script add an obsolete class to the respective table cells. Hiding the resp. cells is all done via CSS, too (but does not require changing the CSS file once you add/change/delete engines).

If you like, I can also change the ES5 et al. tables to use my current approach. Just let me know!

I think I'll break up the parts mentioned in the original issue request and do PRs one-by-one over the coming days/weeks (depending on the spare time I have). I'll also have a look at refactoring some of the code if you don't mind, while leaving my current code pretty much unchanged for the first PR (doing small steps to get things done).

fbender avatar Oct 06 '13 20:10 fbender

First part is now fixed in #88.

fbender avatar Nov 07 '13 12:11 fbender

Finished in https://github.com/kangax/es5-compat-table/commit/0c9c2ba82cca88f297911d85cea46907d66c3a89

kangax avatar Nov 24 '13 17:11 kangax

Yeah, that's much better, thanks a lot!

One more thing: I think it would be easier to make a column per software, and simply show a version for each feature-platform cell, like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_%28CSS%29 (with some adjustments, e.g. visually marking features that are only available in pre-release builds of a version but not the final builds). This would be a bigger architectural change, and I'd like to give it a shot next week, if you give me a go.

fbender avatar Nov 24 '13 19:11 fbender

Hm, not a bad idea! Additionally, I would want to make header (with engine name + version) fixed; perhaps only when scrolling down. It's a bit difficult to inspect entries on a bottom right now.

kangax avatar Nov 24 '13 19:11 kangax

OK, I'll check it out.

The sticky header is a bit problematic, iirc in Firefox at least, but the new "position:sticky" property is being rolled out, and it should support what you'd like to see. Additionally, the script could break up the table into groups, so headers can be repeated between them … I'll see what I can do.

fbender avatar Nov 24 '13 20:11 fbender

Suggestion from twitter — https://twitter.com/kangax/status/405089875944546304

kangax avatar Nov 25 '13 22:11 kangax

Expanded checklist with more stuff

kangax avatar Nov 25 '13 22:11 kangax

This would be a bigger architectural change, and I'd like to give it a shot next week, if you give me a go.

Unsurprisingly, this did not happen. Though I'm willing to look at it during the holidays, and I'll report back mid-January.

fbender avatar Dec 23 '13 20:12 fbender

Though I'm willing to look at it during the holidays, and I'll report back mid-January.

Quick update: By now I built supporting infrastructure for the refactoring. I will continue with this work over the next few weeks. This is not on Github yet, I need to cleanup some stuff before I'm willing to push.

fbender avatar Jan 11 '14 12:01 fbender

Thanks!

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 11, 2014, at 7:41, Florian Bender [email protected] wrote:

Though I'm willing to look at it during the holidays, and I'll report back mid-January.

Quick update: By now I built supporting infrastructure for the refactoring. I will continue with this work over the next few weeks. This is not on Github yet, I need to cleanup some stuff before I'm willing to push.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

kangax avatar Jan 11 '14 21:01 kangax

Asana keeps bugging me to report my progress, unfortunately there's no progress to report. :(

It's still on my TODO but thesis and exams have priority right now. Will try to squeeze in more time in March / April.

fbender avatar Feb 19 '14 14:02 fbender

Sure, don't stress it!

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 19, 2014, at 9:43, Florian Bender [email protected] wrote:

Asana keeps bugging me to report my progress, unfortunately there's no progress to report. :(

It's still on my TODO but thesis and exams have priority right now. Will try to squeeze in more time in March / April.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

kangax avatar Feb 19 '14 15:02 kangax

how do i hide columns? clicking a header fades out the other columns, but they are still there taking up space

aeosynth avatar Jun 04 '14 12:06 aeosynth

@aeosynth why do you need the space there?

kangax avatar Jun 04 '14 19:06 kangax

i don't need the space there - it's simply easier to read if my eyes travel a shorter distance when flicking between the feature name and implementation. also, some users might not have widescreen monitors; removing the space would mean they could view the columns they're interested in without having to scroll

aeosynth avatar Jun 04 '14 22:06 aeosynth

I guess it might make sense. I'll see what I can do.

kangax avatar Jun 05 '14 08:06 kangax

I feel like my recent colourisation of Javascript engines sort-of fulfills the intended purpose of the last checkbox.

webbedspace avatar Nov 05 '14 06:11 webbedspace

I agree. It definitely comes very close if not solves it completely. Marking as done.

kangax avatar Nov 05 '14 16:11 kangax

@webbedspace Added 2 more things (on a bottom) that I think will improve overall experience. What do you think?

kangax avatar Nov 06 '14 11:11 kangax

Is somebody working on:

Replace bottom notes with inline tooltips (for convenience)

Otherwise I will do this next week.

fbender avatar Nov 10 '14 14:11 fbender

I think @webbedspace is working on eliminating some of the footnotes by adding corresponding subtests, but I'm not sure we'll be able to get rid of all footnotes this way; in which case, this could still be useful.

kangax avatar Nov 10 '14 18:11 kangax

I'd just add tooltips and keep the existing footnotes so there's no need for scrolling but the full list is readily available. Will do that next week. =

fbender avatar Nov 11 '14 00:11 fbender

I see that "Make columns hideable" is checked as "done". How do I hide a column now? Let's say I want to hide all the servers/runtimes, how to?

FranklinYu avatar May 16 '18 18:05 FranklinYu