A new UI effort and browser support ramifications

[Andrew Bonventre (Bons)]

Gerrit users,

We are currently in the exploration phase of building a new UI in Polymer that will hopefully replace the current GWT UI.

If the new UI reaches the bar of quality to replace the GWT UI, support for older browsers will be dropped due to Polymer’s browser support. In short, IE9 and earlier won’t be supported anymore.

This is a large effort that will most likely take around a year, so don’t worry about us pulling the rug out from under you next week. We want to be transparent and also ask if this is a major show-stopper for any of you so that we can reach out and help mitigate it. 

Additionally, as things start to solidify with this effort, we’ll be reaching out to get early feedback from users like you to ensure that it hits a high-enough bar to replace the GWT UI. Look out for more details about this in the near future and if you have any questions about the motivations behind the new UI, please reach out.

Thanks,
Andy

[Luca Milanesio]

Hi Andrew,

thank you for sharing this, I think Shawn already mentioned in an earlier post … however your official announcement of the effort is much appreciated.

A few questions:

Q1: Is this effort intended to be a “technology refresh” to get rid of GWT with something more modern but keeping the current Gerrit UX?

Q2: Why Polymer and not AngularJS? Dariusz presented AngularGerrit [1] last year and seemed promising!

Q3: IE wouldn’t be supported anymore, I know this could be a show-stopper for banking users, where (unfortunately) Microsoft + IE is a *must have* combination for desktops.

Q4: Are we planning as well to design the UX in a way that could be easily “re-branded” with custom CSS? (currently it is quite a challenge with GWT-based UX)

Thank you in advance for your feedback on this. It would be helpful if you could talk about this UX effort at the next forthcoming Gerrit User Summit in Mountain View in two weeks time.

Luca.

[1] https://github.com/dluksza/angular-gerrit

--
--
To unsubscribe, email repo-discuss...@googlegroups.com
More info at http://groups.google.com/group/repo-discuss?hl=en

---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Repo and Gerrit Discussion" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to repo-discuss...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Dariusz Luksza]

Few more questions:

Q5: Did you evaluate possibility of extending Polymer UI using
plugins? Do you even consider having extension points for plugins in
the UI?

Q6: Will the new UI be only a "rewrite" or also UI/UX redesign?

--
Best regards

GSM: +49 017 445 41235
Blog: http://luksza.org http://javablog.pl
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/dariuszluksza

[Luca Milanesio]

Q6 == Q1 :-)

Your point on plugins is a very important one: current GWT plugins will need to be rewritten anyway … and for sure the new Polymer UX would need to be extensible through plugins I guess ;-)

Luca.

[Shawn Pearce]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Luca Milanesio <luca.mi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Q3: IE wouldn’t be supported anymore, I know this could be a show-stopper for banking users, where (unfortunately) Microsoft + IE is a *must have* combination for desktops.

IE 10 and IE 11 are supported through Polyfills[1].

I think the plans are for future versions of IE to have better support (require less JS).

[1]  https://github.com/WebComponents/webcomponentsjs#browser-support

[Shawn Pearce]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Dariusz Luksza <dariusz...@gmail.com> wrote:

Q6: Will the new UI be only a "rewrite" or also UI/UX redesign?

Maybe? Its something we are seriously considering, and something that may happen with this project.

[Dariusz Luksza]

That would be awesome! :D especially if you manage to engage UX specialists ;)

[Luca Milanesio]

Thanks Shawn for clarifying … this is really reassuring for our clients :-)

Luca.

[Andrew Bonventre (Bons)]

Q1: Is this effort intended to be a “technology refresh” to get rid of GWT with something more modern but keeping the current Gerrit UX?

Ideally the UX would improve as a result of the project. 

Q2: Why Polymer and not AngularJS? Dariusz presented AngularGerrit [1] last year and seemed promising!

Component-based authoring that will eventually become native behavior is the goal. Polymer exists to use Web Components now, with the goal being less JavaScript in the future, not more. Also, native support means bigger performance gains.

Q3: IE wouldn’t be supported anymore, I know this could be a show-stopper for banking users, where (unfortunately) Microsoft + IE is a *must have* combination for desktops.

Shawn already answered this. Polymer’s JS polyfills support a subset of IE, with Edge on board with the Web Component spec.

 

Q4: Are we planning as well to design the UX in a way that could be easily “re-branded” with custom CSS? (currently it is quite a challenge with GWT-based UX)

Polymer has a very nice styling story: https://www.polymer-project.org/1.0/docs/devguide/styling.html and theming is something we are taking into consideration.

Q5: Did you evaluate possibility of extending Polymer UI using
plugins? Do you even consider having extension points for plugins in
the UI?

 

We don’t want to break the current JS API, which GWT uses for the current plugin system. Plugins are definitely on our radar given Polymer’s ability to dynamically import custom elements/styles.

[Luca Milanesio]

Hi Andrew, thanks for the detailed answer :-) I had a look at WebComponents and they are definitely something very appealing to look at, making the UX development simpler and much more modular.

The native support is a huge extra plus. 

On 23 Oct 2015, at 22:58, Andrew Bonventre (Bons) <andy...@google.com> wrote:

Q1: Is this effort intended to be a “technology refresh” to get rid of GWT with something more modern but keeping the current Gerrit UX?

Ideally the UX would improve as a result of the project. 

Cool, this is really needed by the Gerrit Community: lots of people recognise that Gerrit *is the most complete and powerful* Code Review system on top of Git … UX was the “last obstacle” of adoption for some.

Q2: Why Polymer and not AngularJS? Dariusz presented AngularGerrit [1] last year and seemed promising!

Component-based authoring that will eventually become native behavior is the goal. Polymer exists to use Web Components now, with the goal being less JavaScript in the future, not more. Also, native support means bigger performance gains.

Definitely agreed.

Q3: IE wouldn’t be supported anymore, I know this could be a show-stopper for banking users, where (unfortunately) Microsoft + IE is a *must have* combination for desktops.

Shawn already answered this. Polymer’s JS polyfills support a subset of IE, with Edge on board with the Web Component spec.

Cool.

 

Q4: Are we planning as well to design the UX in a way that could be easily “re-branded” with custom CSS? (currently it is quite a challenge with GWT-based UX)

Polymer has a very nice styling story: https://www.polymer-project.org/1.0/docs/devguide/styling.html and theming is something we are taking into consideration.

Thanks for the link, will look into that.

Q5: Did you evaluate possibility of extending Polymer UI using
plugins? Do you even consider having extension points for plugins in
the UI?

 

We don’t want to break the current JS API, which GWT uses for the current plugin system. Plugins are definitely on our radar given Polymer’s ability to dynamically import custom elements/styles.

Really exciting, thanks for clarifying.

Luca.

[Steffen Gebert]

Hi,

I'm glad to hear about the UX efforts. It's really overdue.

Please stop caring about old-IE users. Even. MS is dropping support for IE 10 in January. Don't block progress because of companies ignoring updates and security.

Steffen

--
Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Mobiltelefon mit K-9 Mail gesendet.

[Luca Milanesio]

Hi Steffen,

I agree we shouldn’t limit our improvements efforts because of IE, however there is people using it and even a degraded user experience would be good enough for them.

Polymer seems to manage it nicely, so it’s good to go :-)

Luca.

[Urs Wolfer]

What's about mobile (responsive & touch) support? I think this is also point worth looking at when redesigning the whole UI. The current UI does not behave nicely on a small screen.

[David Pursehouse]

Sounds like there are a few people interested in this. Would it be
worth having a presentation at the upcoming Gerrit summit?


On 10/24/2015 05:30 AM, 'Andrew Bonventre (Bons)' via Repo and Gerrit

Discussion wrote:
> Gerrit users,
>
> We are currently in the exploration phase of building a new UI in
> Polymer that will hopefully replace the current GWT UI.
>
> If the new UI reaches the bar of quality to replace the GWT UI, support
> for older browsers will be dropped due to Polymer’s browser support

> <https://www.polymer-project.org/1.0/resources/compatibility.html>. In

> short, IE9 and earlier won’t be supported anymore.
>
> This is a large effort that will most likely take around a year, so
> don’t worry about us pulling the rug out from under you next week. We
> want to be transparent and also ask if this is a major show-stopper for
> any of you so that we can reach out and help mitigate it.
>
> Additionally, as things start to solidify with this effort, we’ll be
> reaching out to get early feedback from users like you to ensure that it
> hits a high-enough bar to replace the GWT UI. Look out for more details
> about this in the near future and if you have any questions about the
> motivations behind the new UI, please reach out.
>
> Thanks,
> Andy
>

> --
> --
> To unsubscribe, email repo-discuss...@googlegroups.com
> More info at http://groups.google.com/group/repo-discuss?hl=en
>
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Repo and Gerrit Discussion" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to repo-discuss...@googlegroups.com

> <mailto:repo-discuss...@googlegroups.com>.

[luca.mi...@gmail.com]

+1

Presentation + round table

Sent from my iPhone

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to repo-discuss...@googlegroups.com.

[Saša Živkov]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 3:48 AM, David Pursehouse <david.pu...@sonymobile.com> wrote:

Sounds like there are a few people interested in this.  Would it be worth having a presentation at the upcoming Gerrit summit?

+1 

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to repo-discuss...@googlegroups.com.

[Petrică Clement Chiriac]

Will new Gerrit UI continue to use GWT? Or will removed ?

[Luca Milanesio]

My understanding is: Polymer will replace GWT.

Luca.

[Andrew Bonventre (Bons)]

Due to a family obligation, I won’t be able to attend the summit this year, however even if I did there would not be much to present given the very nascent state of the new UI (there hasn’t even been anything landed in Gerrit’s codebase, yet).

We want to ensure that the community is a part of this process so expect to see a more formalized survey headed to the list. In the meantime, the best way for people to start being involved:

+ Keep notes on the frustrations you and your users encounter with the current UI (both from an implementation and user experience perspective).

+ Start using Google Analytics or a similar tool to gather as much data as you can about user behavior. It’s very important to know which features are used heavily and which are never used. If you feel comfortable sharing anonymized usage reports with us, that would be even better but obviously is not a requirement. The more data we have, the better the decisions we can make for the product and community. Reach out to me privately if you’d like to discuss the logistics of this.

I apologize for not being around in person next week, but I am very committed to ensuring that we are making the best product for the community, so expect updates and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re wondering how things are going.

A

[Doug Kelly]

I see Shawn still has PolyGerrit on the schedule; is there still plans for someone else to discuss it? I'm interested in seeing what the plans are.  I also have been soliciting feedback from our users to gather what is particularly irksome about the new UI (especially since we plan on upgrading to 2.11 next month), and the general summary has been certain actions were easier in the old UI.  I'll be happy to relay that feedback this weekend, or later on.

I doubt I can talk anyone into anonymous behavior monitoring, sadly, even if it would help users -- I think people might be too uneasy with it in general.  Hopefully some of the bigger public sites can help fill that void, though.

[Shawn Pearce]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 7:22 AM, Doug Kelly <doug...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I see Shawn still has PolyGerrit on the schedule; is there still plans for
> someone else to discuss it?

Yes.

> I'm interested in seeing what the plans are. I
> also have been soliciting feedback from our users to gather what is
> particularly irksome about the new UI (especially since we plan on upgrading
> to 2.11 next month), and the general summary has been certain actions were
> easier in the old UI. I'll be happy to relay that feedback this weekend, or
> later on.

We would certainly appreciate a report on that so it can be used as an
input in the PolyGerrit planning.

> I doubt I can talk anyone into anonymous behavior monitoring, sadly, even if
> it would help users -- I think people might be too uneasy with it in
> general. Hopefully some of the bigger public sites can help fill that void,
> though.

Yea, some things we were talking about might be mineable from the
database itself in aggregate like "what percentage of code reviews use
a file level comment"?

Others are things like "How many users click on All > Open" vs. doing
something else. That's harder to get information on but useful for
UI/UX planning.

[Luca Milanesio]

> On 4 Nov 2015, at 23:12, 'Shawn Pearce' via Repo and Gerrit Discussion <repo-d...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 7:22 AM, Doug Kelly <doug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I see Shawn still has PolyGerrit on the schedule; is there still plans for
>> someone else to discuss it?
>
> Yes.
>
>> I'm interested in seeing what the plans are. I
>> also have been soliciting feedback from our users to gather what is
>> particularly irksome about the new UI (especially since we plan on upgrading
>> to 2.11 next month), and the general summary has been certain actions were
>> easier in the old UI. I'll be happy to relay that feedback this weekend, or
>> later on.
>
> We would certainly appreciate a report on that so it can be used as an
> input in the PolyGerrit planning.
>
>> I doubt I can talk anyone into anonymous behavior monitoring, sadly, even if
>> it would help users -- I think people might be too uneasy with it in
>> general. Hopefully some of the bigger public sites can help fill that void,
>> though.
>
> Yea, some things we were talking about might be mineable from the
> database itself in aggregate like "what percentage of code reviews use
> a file level comment”?

We have over 6.5K users, 16K projects and 250K reviews on GerritHub.io, we could ask the user to share their anonymous navigation stats.
(with optional opt-out of course)

Luca.

>
> Others are things like "How many users click on All > Open" vs. doing
> something else. That's harder to get information on but useful for
> UI/UX planning.
>

[Michael Zhou]

Late to the party, but this is exciting and bittersweet for me :)

Hopefully the diff screen will be easier to write in plain JS without all the Java wrappers around CodeMirror APIs.

[Felipe Cypriano]

I'm even later to the party, I couldn't find any new topics about this new UI searching the archive so I'll comment here. I'm a new Gerrit user (used GitHub, mostly before) and this topic made me very hopeful, I hope this is still an ongoing effort. IMO Gerrit really needs a new UI.

[Urs Wolfer]

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 3:50:30 AM UTC+1, Felipe Cypriano wrote:

I'm even later to the party, I couldn't find any new topics about this new UI searching the archive so I'll comment here. I'm a new Gerrit user (used GitHub, mostly before) and this topic made me very hopeful, I hope this is still an ongoing effort. IMO Gerrit really needs a new UI.

Work is still in progress. You can see the current state deployed on gerrit-review already [1].

Bye

urs

[1] https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com?polygerrit

[Felipe Cypriano]

Oh WOW! That is definitely a much welcome improvement.

---

Felipe Cypriano

--
--
To unsubscribe, email repo-discuss...@googlegroups.com
More info at http://groups.google.com/group/repo-discuss?hl=en

---

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Repo and Gerrit Discussion" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/repo-discuss/AuvsRmXChz8/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to repo-discuss...@googlegroups.com.

[Robert Mitwicki]

Work is still in progress. You can see the current state deployed on gerrit-review already [1].

How to switch back to standard UI?

Thanks
Best regards
Robert

[Michael Zhou]

Pass ?polygerrit=0 will do, I think. Or you can use this handy Chrome extension to do the switching: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/repo-discuss/polygerrit/repo-discuss/vBirC0v3ihE/0jshDHBODwAJ