At the end of last summer, my friend and co-worker, Tom Fennelly <https://github.com/tfennelly>, along with the help of Kevin Burke <https://github.com/kevinburke>, Daniel Beck <https://github.com/daniel-beck>, and others began the first steps of improving and modernizing the Jenkins user experience. In addition to some of the superficial enhancements, these changes are meant to add a bit of responsiveness and cross-device usability to the Jenkins GUI, as well as adding a means of creating and swapping new CSS based display themes. This effort is best summarized by this article from Jenkins-ci.org, and this thread from the Jenkinsci-users group:
- *User Interface Refresh <http://jenkins-ci.org/node/501#disqus_thread>:* http://jenkins-ci.org/node/501#disqus_thread - *Any comments on the UI changes in 1.572 <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/jenkinsci-users/ui$20tom/jenkinsci-users/ULEV87g9iac/LaTt5J2tHV8J>:* https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/jenkinsci-users/ui$20tom/jenkinsci-users/ULEV87g9iac/LaTt5J2tHV8J As part of our second wave effort here at CloudBees, I am looking at ways of improving the usability of the Jelly based form controls used in the item creation and configuration pages and the responsiveness and interactivity of the main dashboard grid control. In my investigations so far, I believe there are essentially 3 non-exclusive paths forward for enhancing these elements: 1. *CSS only --* Building on the last round of enhancements, we can offer a set of theme extensions that will allow the Jenkins users and community to customize basic layout, iconography, and typeface to tailor Jenkins to their own tastes. 2. *UI component expansion and refactoring --* By modifying and adding to the existing set of Jelly files and their corresponding data binding rules we can significantly modernize the way Jenkins views and configs draw themselves and potentially streamline plugin creation. 3. *Client side MVC veneers --* In a manner similar to what CloudBees has recently done with the new Workflow visualization, we can rethink our approach to new feature UIs by using a REST API based architecture coupled with client-side rendering widgets. This would allow us to use newer framework libraries like Angular.js and newer component libraries like Bootstrap and JQuery UI to add greater richness to the Jenkins user experience. These are likely not the only paths forward, but merely the first I can think of. With that reality in mind, I am hoping to reach out to you the Jenkins community to help ground and sculpt our thinking about what is both possible and desirable. If you are at all interested in the Jenkins user experience, I would love to get your feedback of any sort on this thread, which could be as simple as a "+1" or as involved as a PHD thesis or as much as you have time to type into a response box. To the extent that it helps conversation along, I also have a handful of questions to which I would love responses: 1. For plugin builders, can you tell me a bit about creating the UI portion of your plugin (did you use the data binding form controls, what was hard, what did you have to invent)? 2. For regular Jenkins users, what are the UX areas of Jenkins you would most like to see improved (I think it is the item create/config and the dashboard/job list grid, but would love to hear others and general feedback)? 3. For UXers and other Jenkins contributors, how do my 3 forward paths seem (are there others, do you have experience with any yourself, do any seem scary)? 4. Has anyone tried to make their own themes with the new capabilities Tom has added or would you appreciate and handful of canned options to choose between? 5. Has anyone started using Workflow on a regular basis, and in particular used the new workflow progress visualization enough to offer feedback? Again, if any of you all are at all interested in the Jenkins UX, we at CloudBees are interested in helping move this ball forward and would love to hear your feedback. Thanks for your help, Gus -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jenkins Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to jenkinsci-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jenkinsci-users/1959f2f8-770e-4eef-81a6-6c88360ef104%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
