Author Topic: BHB Usability2  (Read 2733 times)

jporkkahtc

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BHB Usability2
« on: October 04, 2016, 07:56:25 PM »
The filtering in the BHB is done in a bizarre way.

It offers filtering by pattern and date, but its really weird.

The top list acts as a date-filter for the bottom list -- effectively the top is a random selection of datestamps, by which the user can filter the bottom treeview.
Once a datestamp is selected, the bottom treeview is filtered to show only those files whose most recent version is more recent than that timestamp.

The pattern filters the top list - so you use the pattern filter to reduced the set of datestamps available from which to filter the bottom list.


May I suggest a more straight forward filtering scheme?

Eliminate the top list of files / timestamps.

Allow a pattern and a date-range (from - to).
These both together filter the single tree-view of files in the history.
Show only those files whose name matches the pattern and have *any* version in the specified date-range.

By default, the tree-view would show all files in history.

Dennis

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Re: BHB Usability2
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2016, 09:15:25 PM »
Your suggestion is simple, but you lose some valuable information in the process.  Think of the top pane as a trail of breadcrumbs (file saves).  It helps you remember that you were working in file XYZ.cpp, then switched to ZYX.cpp, and then switched back to work on XYZ.cpp a bit more, and that's where everything went wrong.  You probably don't remember what time of day everything went wrong, but you might remember where you were working, the top pane helps you reconstruct that information.  Without it, you would be forced to binary-search on date ranges until you found the version that you want to go back to.

jporkkahtc

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Re: BHB Usability2
« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2016, 09:40:37 PM »
Yeah, maybe, but I don't think that holds up for last week sometime.
Today, yesterday maybe, but beyond that I'm not so sure.

Besides, if the bottom pane displayed modified times, and had columns to sort by, you can still get those "breadcrumbs".

I remember when I first started using BHB: I found it really confusing. Now, I've learned what it does, but in my extensive usability studies (with 1 user  :) ), it was found to be hard figure out what it was doing.


Another bit of functionality that is missing from the UI (my UI idea doesn't cover it either) is multiple files point in time: Pick a timestamp, now every file that you View or Diff you will default to using the version of that file as it existed at that timestamp. Select a folder, hit "diff" and you get a multi-file diff against the current version of each of the files under that folder, and the version at the selected point in time.

Make "Restore" also handle folders.
Add a "Copy" button to let you restore the selected files / folders to a different location.