Usability review for 4.1

[ellisonbg]

We have a lot of new Ui in the notebook that need a solid overall usability review before the 4.1 release. I can work on this.

[jdfreder]

This and the related issue #558 are the last two things open for 4.1.

Do you know what the time frame is for this? Maybe anyone not participating in the usability review in person (@minrk @Carreau and I) can have a use-the-notebook part-day on Monday to make sure nothing critical is broken.

[Carreau]

One thing, I think we moved the celltoolbar selector from toolbar to menu. Is that API change ?

[jdfreder]

The DOM className ? if so, yeah I'd consider that an API change - it will break peoples custom css

[ellisonbg]

I don't consider our DOM class names like the celltoolbar to be public API.
To me our public DOM API right now is the stuff that ends up in nbconvert's
HTML output.

Part of releasing new features is taking the time to get them as right as
possible before release. We have enough usability problems as it is and
can't afford to pile on new usability and design debt. I am not saying we
need to bike shed and or get things perfect.

I should be able to spend time on this over the weekend and early next week.

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 7:06 PM, Jonathan Frederic <notifications@github.com

wrote:

The DOM className ? if so, yeah I'd consider that an API change - it will
break peoples custom css

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#533 (comment).

Brian E. Granger
Associate Professor of Physics and Data Science
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
@ellisonbg on Twitter and GitHub
bgranger@calpoly.edu and ellisonbg@gmail.com

[Carreau]

No I mean the actual UI element is now gone.
I was like WTF, where is it:

I I found it because I knew there was a PR for that, and I knew what to look for.
This is actually changing user UI in between minor releases.

I'm not against the new location in the menu, I just think that a CellToolbar button which tells you where the new menu is would be nice, otherwise user will WTF when they need to use it at the worst moment.

[ellisonbg]

Ahh, got it. Any ideas on how to transition users to the new location more
easily? Want to give a button a go?

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 8:27 PM, Matthias Bussonnier <
notifications@github.com> wrote:

No I mean the actual UI element is now gone.
I was like WTF, where is it:

[image: screen shot 2015-10-23 at 17 22 13]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/335567/10707687/48f09782-79ab-11e5-811c-4a27c18fcc38.png

[image: screen shot 2015-10-23 at 17 22 35]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/335567/10707665/c26eabb8-79aa-11e5-8c0d-007d927aa40d.png

I I found it because I knew there was a PR for that, and I knew what to
look for.
This is actually changing user UI in between minor releases.

I'm not against the new location in the menu, I just think that a
CellToolbar button which tells you where the new menu is would be nice,
otherwise user will WTF when they need to use it at the worst moment.

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#533 (comment).

Brian E. Granger
Associate Professor of Physics and Data Science
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
@ellisonbg on Twitter and GitHub
bgranger@calpoly.edu and ellisonbg@gmail.com

[Carreau]

I can display and highlight the location in the menu (with animation)through JS:

I can tackle that on monday.

[willingc]

@jhamrick Any usability thoughts on the changes to Cell Toolbar -> Create Assignment and nbgrader?

[jhamrick]

Thanks for the ping. I like something like Matthias' suggestion, though
I am away this weekend do will have a closer look on Monday.

On Saturday, October 24, 2015, Carol Willing notifications@github.com
wrote:

@jhamrick https://github.com/jhamrick Any usability thoughts on the
changes to Cell Toolbar -> Create Assignment and nbgrader?

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#533 (comment).

[jdfreder]

@ellisonbg how's the usability study coming along? Any issues arise yet that we can start to address?

[ellisonbg]

Been working on it this morning.

Found one just now - when you are using the command palette and I have
typed enough that there is only a single option left, if I press return it
doesn't do anything - I have to do arrow down to pick that single option.
In that case a simple return should "just work"

More to come soon...

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 11:23 AM, Jonathan Frederic <
notifications@github.com> wrote:

@ellisonbg https://github.com/ellisonbg how's the usability study
coming along? Any issues arise yet that we can start to address?

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#533 (comment).

Brian E. Granger
Associate Professor of Physics and Data Science
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
@ellisonbg on Twitter and GitHub
bgranger@calpoly.edu and ellisonbg@gmail.com

[Carreau]

Found one just now - when you are using the command palette and I have
typed enough that there is only a single option left, if I press return it
doesn't do anything - I have to do arrow down to pick that single option.
In that case a simple return should "just work"

I'm aware of this one there is already an issue open somewhere,
it is one of the first thing I though about.
It is though technically really annoying to do for now, as for fuzzy searching.
Otherwise it would already be in. It might need some refactor upstream.

[jhamrick]

Just had a look at this. I love the UI deprecation for the celltoolbar -- nice job @Carreau ! Seems like everything still works fine with nbgrader (I think the tests will break, but the actual functionality seems to be ok).

One note on the help for the keyboard shortcuts which might be potentially confusing -- the closeness of the description of "command mode" and the command key implies that they have something to do with each other (which they don't):

I would suggest moving the section about the key names into a different box (maybe yellow or green or something) and out of the one that describes the different modes. Initially I was confused because I thought maybe the key bindings had changed and command had something to do with command mode now -- and I'm used to using the notebook 😄

[ellisonbg]

I had the same experience as Jess with that. I think using a separate box
makes sense. Although, I think the color could be the same as both are
general informative.

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 2:14 PM, Jessica B. Hamrick <
notifications@github.com> wrote:

Just had a look at this. I love the UI deprecation for the celltoolbar --
nice job @Carreau https://github.com/Carreau ! Seems like everything
still works fine with nbgrader (I think the tests will break, but the
actual functionality seems to be ok).

One note on the help for the keyboard shortcuts which might be potentially
confusing -- the closeness of the description of "command mode" and the
command key implies that they have something to do with each other (which
they don't):

[image: image]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/83444/10738003/7377ef54-7bd2-11e5-992f-964d8ef3cadb.png

I would suggest moving the section about the key names into a different
box (maybe yellow or green or something) and out of the one that describes
the different modes. Initially I was confused because I thought maybe the
key bindings had changed and command had something to do with command mode
now -- and I'm used to using the notebook [image: 😄]

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#533 (comment).

Brian E. Granger
Associate Professor of Physics and Data Science
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
@ellisonbg on Twitter and GitHub
bgranger@calpoly.edu and ellisonbg@gmail.com

[jhamrick]

Some more things:

• I like the blue bar that shows which cells are selected. However, it doesn't go away after merging cells and thus if I want to merge other cells it will merge all the cells including the one that was selected from before, and I can't seem to find a way to un-select it.
• Undoing the merging of cells is broken. It will un-delete the cell that was originally deleted, but it doesn't remove the source from the first cell that was merged in.

Edit: see #665

[ellisonbg]

You can unmark individual cells with ctrl-shift or do the "unmark-all-cell"
action in the command palette.

But we should probably start to create separate issues for the things we
find related to this.

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Jessica B. Hamrick <
notifications@github.com> wrote:

Some more things:

I like the blue bar that shows which cells are selected. However, it
doesn't go away after merging cells and thus if I want to merge other cells
it will merge all the cells including the one that was selected from
before, and I can't seem to find a way to un-select it.

Undoing the merging of cells is broken. It will un-delete the cell
that was originally deleted, but it doesn't remove the source from the
first cell that was merged in.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#533 (comment).

Brian E. Granger
Associate Professor of Physics and Data Science
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
@ellisonbg on Twitter and GitHub
bgranger@calpoly.edu and ellisonbg@gmail.com

[jhamrick]

Ok, I will open a new issue then.

[Carreau]

I like the blue bar that shows which cells are selected. However, it doesn't go away after merging cells and thus if I want to merge other cells it will merge all the cells including the one that was selected from before, and I can't seem to find a way to un-select it.

Escape will deselect once #657 will be merged.

[Carreau]

How do you "undo merge" ? With undo delete ?

[Carreau]

(and Brian meant unselect with Ctrl-Space not shift)

[jhamrick]

Ok, I think having stuff be deselected with "escape" would make that less surprising for me. I was looking for a menu option and found none. The problem with relying on the command palette there is because users won't necessarily know the correct terminology -- e.g. I didn't know it was called "marked" (I would have thought to look for "selected"). Having unmarking being bound to escape seems intuitive, though.

[ellisonbg]

Jess makes a good point - do you think we should also have an edit menu
item for unmarking all cells as well?

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Jessica B. Hamrick <
notifications@github.com> wrote:

Ok, I think having stuff be deselected with "escape" would make that less
surprising for me. I was looking for a menu option and found none. The
problem with relying on the command palette there is because users won't
necessarily know the correct terminology -- e.g. I didn't know it was
called "marked" (I would have thought to look for "selected"). Having
unmarking being bound to escape seems intuitive, though.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#533 (comment).

Brian E. Granger
Associate Professor of Physics and Data Science
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
@ellisonbg on Twitter and GitHub
bgranger@calpoly.edu and ellisonbg@gmail.com

[jhamrick]

Ok, all the various PRs I opened today should address I think all my usability concerns about the cell marking.