The issue: serving two audiences

As far as I understand, the current PPA index page has evolved from an initial requirement serve developers and packagers - whose main PPA needs are focused on building and testing packages.

Over time, we have seen a gradual shift to also serve the needs of PPA users - people who just want to use the software provided by a PPA.

As a result, the PPA index page has become quite complicated - trying to provide simple instructions for adding the PPA to your system, indicating the current status of builds, filtering and paginating through packages and links to functionality to copy packages etc., all on the one interface. See the purpose and use-cases for the PPA index page for more information.

Part of the problem is that, even though the url of the page (+ppa/ppa_name) represents a singular object - a personal archive, due to the needs of the initial developer base, we have pulled information that should really have been at +ppa/ppa_name/packages up into the ppa index page.

= Re-design ideas ==

Idea 3. Statistics and Timeline

After some more feedback from Martin Pool, the following design:

• Removes the "Software Upadted by this PPA" portlet, after martin (and others) commented that it just seems to be filling space, given that the packages are clearly displayed at the bottom of the page anyway.
• A statistics portlet is added (replacing the above removed one) that displays stats relevant to both target audiences.
• The admin/uploader-only portlets were scrapped (as it's confusing to display different things to different people among other reasons).
• Entries in the "Latest Uploads portlet" can be expanded to see the latest changes, providing a timeline of package uploads (this information will of course be present in the RSS feed, this change just exposes it neatly in the UI too).

Download the gimp xcf file to play with.

Identified issues for discussion

• As Celso pointed out, we can't actually say how many packages on someone's system will be updated by the PPA, rather just "27 packages are included for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)".

Idea 4. Add your redesign idea here!

Deprecated ideas

The following design ideas are no longer under consideration after feedback showed problems. You can view all input and feedback for more details.

Idea 2. Re-focusing the purpose

After some great feedback from kiko, cprov, bigjools, martin, maxb and poolie, the following design re-focuses on the needs of the two target audiences by:

• Moving the installation instructions up (how can I use it).
• Removing 'Most popular packages' and 'Most recently uploaded packages' as they do not help a user answer the question "why should I want to add this PPA?" (ie. a software channel, as opposed to installing a single package).
• Adds a portlet outlining the scope of the PPA "Software updated by this PPA" in the main area to (1) help the user decide if it's for them, and (2) encourage PPA publishers to have tightly-focused PPAs. If the PPA has more than 5 packages this portlet could disappear, or display something relevant ("This PPA currently updates 25 packages on your system. You can browse those packages below.")
• Adds a (simplified) list of all the packages provided by the PPA (filtered by distroseries of user, but changeable) to enable the user to decide whether they want to add the PPA. Note: the normal PPA table does not fit (even if we wanted all that detail there), but is available at ./packages with all the normal functionality.
• Adds a Latest uploads portlet to the side content which enables the publisher to verify easily that their latest upload is being processed, as well as allowing users to subscribe via RSS to package updates for this PPA (in case they want to remove it when a different package is added etc.)

Download the gimp xcf file to play with.

Identified issues for discussion

• See Martin Pool's comments on IRC

Idea 1. Simplify PPA page by providing separate packages URL

One idea is to simplify the PPA page so that it describes the singular PPA, summarising its most popular packages and most recently uploaded packages etc.:

Download the gimp xcf file to play with.

As the owner or uploader or admin, you will also see two additional portlets on the above page for "Build summary status" and "Repository disk usage".

Option 1: To smooth the transition, we could keep the list of source packages at the bottom of the page, but any interaction with it (ie. filtering or paginating) will then use the +ppa/ppa_name/packages url to handle the request.

Identified issues for discussion

• Changing the url for browsing packages is a big move - and perhaps unwanted - this idea would change the url where packages are browsed to +ppa/ppa_name/packages - which might not be a welcome change for people who are very used to the source packages being displayed at +ppa/ppa_name. I personally don't see the 'extra-click' as an issue, as uploaders/owners will quickly start navigating directly to +ppa/ppa_name/packages, but a number of people have expressed concern.

• We cannot (yet) implement most popular packages - the infrastructure for most popular packages isn't planned to be implemented until post 3-0. This means that users who browse to the PPA page will only see most recently uploaded packages, and potentially will need to click on the 'All packages' link to verify that the package that they are interested is present. One solution to this is to temporarily still include the sources table at the bottom of the page, but as soon as the user clicks 'next page' or filters, it will use the /packages url. This option may provide a smoother transition anyway.

• There is no side-content - Most-recent-uploads could possibly be considered notifications for the side-portlet (currently there is not anything relevant for the well-defined contents of the side-portlet). This is not an issue, but the side content does look great in other designs

• Given that the main use-case for people using the PPA index page is use the software, that section should go above the other portlets (beuno's suggestion)