Looks very nice. The search might require some work but it's the occasion to work on making the standard search easily customizable to cover this kind of use case (which is not the first one). On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 10:31 AM, Marius Dumitru Florea <[email protected]> wrote:

Awesome!

On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 8:51 AM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) < [email protected]> wrote:

...

Hi devs,

Here are some ideas about how the repository application used on extensions.xwiki.org could look like if we were to provide multiple display layouts for extensions, require the contributors to add custom icons, colors and screenshots.

http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/exoGrid

In terms of design I tried to make it look as a proper application store, but it will be heavily influenced on users providing ratings for extensions and contributors on providing quality icons / colors/ description / screenshots.

In terms of interaction, the biggest change would be a revamp of the search functionality. Currently users are using it, but it's a generic search, focused on text results.

Let me know what you think, Caty

P.S. Proposal ideas iterated with Marius, Alex and Eduard.

-- Thomas Mortagne

On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 10:32 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Caty,

...

On 30 Mar 2018, at 07:51, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi devs,

Here are some ideas about how the repository application used on extensions.xwiki.org could look like if we were to provide multiple display layouts for extensions, require the contributors to add custom icons, colors and screenshots.

http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/exoGrid

In terms of design I tried to make it look as a proper application store, but it will be heavily influenced on users providing ratings for extensions and contributors on providing quality icons / colors/ description / screenshots.

In terms of interaction, the biggest change would be a revamp of the search functionality. Currently users are using it, but it's a generic search, focused on text results.

Let me know what you think,

Nice!

I have some comments:

* You dropped the concept of “Recommended” extension which provided an interesting definition which is lost and there’s no longer a way for users to view Extensions that match a quality criteria. “Top Extensions” is not about quality but about how many persons have installed an extension (they don’t even need to use it. * You said “top sponsoring companies”. However there’s only one. See http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/Governance * You used “Top Extensions”. I think it would be more accurate to say something like “Most Installed Extensions”.

My purpose was to use the terminology found in the majority of application stores. Thanks for the detailed / XWiki specific notes. My intention was to have a generic proposal, not a very accurate one. Still, I don't know if users care about the nuances or if they would identify / understand faster terms that are used worldwide. "Top" could also mean the extensions that have the best ratings. Or a combination of installs and ratings.

* In the search you show a “Price” facet but this won’t be easy to implement because only free apps are available on e.x.o and indexing other repos would mean some custom solr index/system and I think that’s probably too complex to do.

The example was E.X.O, but I tried to think about what facets would be interesting for the Repo app in general, and in some cases the stores could have paid apps.

* I’d like to keep the LT view. ** It provides a much nicer view when you need to filter and find extensions - it’s harder to find what you need if your eyes need to travel horizontally and vertically. ** And doing a search will be a lot slower and refresh the page. ** It scales less well since you need to click on the next page to view more.

The LT view could be accessed from the "Browse" button. LT are not that common in other stores, it's more an XWiki component. Regarding scalability of the LT, it all depends on the number of entries we display. If we have a step of 10-15 entries (like the one displayed in the mockups), the Grid view (3 + 4 + 10*) accommodates more entries than the LT view (10+2), in our example. Also depends on the information we display in the LT. Our current LT shows a lot of data vertically, but the question is are those data important / needed for the user (Created, Last Modified, Authors, etc.). There are also issues with our e.x.o LT: Ratings can't be sorted / filtered, Authors can't be filtered, so even if the LT displays more info, sometimes we disable those functions because of various reasons. The Grid displays simplifies a lot the showed data. I agree that is not that accurate / complete as the LT, but that was the point, prioritizing usage and ratings.

* One idea is to have the “Search” page as a Browse page and have two ways of displaying it (either a LT view or a Boxed view with search). * Globally my worry is that while the boxed view seems nicer visually, I think it’s less usable in practice. The improved search view is very nice though compared to the search view we have now. So IMO we need to find the right balance of LT view and Box view.

The proposal tried to showcase how it could look like more like an application store, applying the same display patterns that users expects from a store, but sure the LT can still be part of the Browse functionality and allow advanced filtering. Thanks, Caty

Thanks a lot -Vincent

...

Caty

P.S. Proposal ideas iterated with Marius, Alex and Eduard.