-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 2
New issue
Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.
By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.
Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account
Provide user feedback in empty panes #11
Comments
We like option 4 but we will include the supported packages for the plots pane. |
I made a list of what panes I think could benefit from this kind of “empty” pane treatment. Some aren’t as empty as the blank space of the plots pane but still don’t provide any kind of feedback until run, so I think they could benefit from similar treatment.
In the case of Code Analysis and Profiler panes, I’m undecided whether or not they should keep their current content and just add a message. For now, I’ve posted it with an illustration since that takes more work to visualize than deciding we want to leave it mostly as is. On that note, here are some more explorations of what the illustrations could look like and what messages might makes sense. Feedback on both is appreciated. First is an illustration style following the lead of the last post. These look like approximations of what a given pane will look like once there is content in it. PlotsAlmost the same as the last round. Has an updated message, but I left a blank for proper wording around which packages were supported. Variable ExplorerCode AnalysisProfilerSecond, I experimented with a less literal approach that is more playful and possibly more informative. While seeing what a full pane might looks like can be helpful in cases like the Plots pane where a plot is easy to identify, the difference between some panes is harder to tell (both the Variable Explorer and Profiler panes look like tables). PlotsVariable ExplorerI think this one needs the most work if we are interested in this style. It's still quite rough. Code AnalysisProfilerI'll re-post these illustrations on their own in #14 for consistency and review. |
List of Panes:
|
Variable explorer: |
Here's the next round of illustrations based on the above feedback (except for Find since that's still waiting for a little more feedback). Variable ExplorerI redistributed the letters and sparkles a little bit to make it more balanced. I don't think it adds much, but that's up to you! ProjectsEven though Projects will default to a different pane size, I don't think it's wise to make illustrations in a different size/ratio since (1) it can be resized and (2) I don't think it will make a big difference. This mockup does show how this looks more spaced out and scaled down, though. I could also use feedback on what info makes sense in the lower feedback text. Let me know what you think! HistoryI think the [1] approach looked the best by far and was the most recognizable from the console. Of course, I can show mockups of the other directions if you want. PlotsCorrects the size of the sparkles. ProfilerAdds sparkles to match the rest of the illustrations. Code AnalysisAlso adds ✨ sparkles ✨. |
Option 1: Maybe try to use a stack of files and something that says that they are text files since it doesn't work for other stuff.
READY :)
READY :)
-Use multiple numbers in several lines and add colons ':' after them
READY :)
READY :)
READY :)
Maybe dots or circles at different points in a file and a "cute" bug |
Breakpoints: Maybe try the bug with a head but we like the eyes and the legs. |
Several panes in Spyder might have no content until the user does a specific action. Right now, most of these panes look like empty rectangles without any explanation for why they are empty, so users could easily think there is an error, that they have done something that interrupted the pane’s function, or that it is loading very slowly.
It’d be a better experience if Spyder is transparent about two things:
There’s a few different ways we can solve this lack of feedback, but it should have a visual relationship or similar approach and feel to the work on a combined Help pane’s “home” as shown in #9 since they are both in-pane messages (though that is more of an index of help options than an empty pane).
A few notes about these mockups:
Option 1
This one matches the Help pane work almost exactly. I don’t think it is the strongest approach visually, but if we want the panes to match exactly this might be the direction to explore.
Option 2
This is the next closest to the Help pane work, but a little more balanced for the space.
Option 3
Here I started to explore if there was something useful an empty pane could do on top of communicating basic states of the pane to users. In this iteration, the empty pane messages are accompanied by a list of imported visualization packages so users can know what they could be generating plots from before they have even done it. I’m not sure if tracking visualization package imports is a useful or technically feasible idea (Does the Plots pane even know what is happening in the Editor before it is run?). It’s here for review anyways, and I’d appreciate the feedback. Maybe a different set of useful plot-related information fits here instead?
Option 4
This option has the least in common with the Help pane reworking, but breaks up the already text-heavy Spyder UI with a simple illustration of what the pane can look like when it has content. It is also the furthest from anything that currently exists in Spyder UI, though there aren’t any comparable messages that I’m aware of.
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: