Thoughts on the release notes page design

[tellison]

Here's a quick review/braindump of the current release notes rendering on the website.

This is as much for my own record as anything, so details may be sketchy.

1. Link to release notes is not prominent on the releases page. The notes should be easily found. Fixed by Link to release notes is not prominent on the releases page #2128
2. Release notes page suffers from CLS problem on slow connection, showing "Oops ... we couldn't find those release notes" for a while before being replaced by actual notes. Would prefer "Working..." or something, and only showing "Oops" on error. - fixed by fix release notes CLS issue and icons for priorities #1510
3. Page would benefit from some preamble text about the release and the notes. Bonus points for summarising the number of P1's fixed etc. - fixed by fix release notes CLS issue and icons for priorities #1510
4. No default sort order? Should initially be by (a) priority then (b) component.
5. Hover help text is unhelpful - just repeats the actual text. Consider description of priority levels. - fixed by fix release notes CLS issue and icons for priorities #1510
6. Not clear that the columns are sortable / filterable by clicking on their hidden menu. Figure out how to make that clearer or more explicit by exploring table design etc? - fixed by fix release notes CLS issue and icons for priorities #1510
7. Consider using icons for priority levels. Not necessarily matching the actual JIRA icons, but meaningful P1-P5 icons. - fixed by fix release notes CLS issue and icons for priorities #1510
8. Reduce height of each row of the table to reduce whitespace and make the content more dense. Increase the initial number of rows in the table. This allows for quicker scanning. - fixed by fix release notes CLS issue and icons for priorities #1510
9. Notes don't show type of fix, e.g. bug, new feature, etc. - fixed by fix release notes CLS issue and icons for priorities #1510
10. Needs to include security info in underlying data - understood that is a work in progress. Required to answer FAQ, is this CVE fixed in this build.
11. Personal preference: don't lead with the bug ID. As a user I probably care most about Priority, Component, the ID and title.
12. Personal preference: configure the table to filter component and priority on set of available values rather than having to freetype a filter. Obviously the bug ID and title should remain free text filtering.

[smlambert]

related: adoptium/adoptium#207

[CarmenDelgadoEclipse]

Hello, about item 2, here is a link to a Slack discussion we had (https://adoptium.slack.com/archives/CLCFNV2JG/p1675771432911209 )

[gdams]

Hello, about item 2, here is a link to a Slack discussion we had (https://adoptium.slack.com/archives/CLCFNV2JG/p1675771432911209 )

It's a different issue that Tim is reporting @CarmenDelgadoEclipse, I'll put together a fix

[ggam]

Perhaps this should be a separate issue, but the current release notes only account for OpenJDK changes. I'd like to see Adoptium/Temurin specific issues resolved for the specific version. Otherwise I cannot differentiate the added value of the distribution vs any other vendor.

temurin-build repo publishes releases (https://github.com/adoptium/temurin-build/releases) as well as aqa-tests (https://github.com/adoptium/aqa-tests/releases). It'd be interesting to get a summary of how that efforts improve my experience as a user.

[xavierfacq]

@tellison

For item 1 (Link to release notes is not prominent on the releases page.), what do think if we add some styles like in the image below:

[tellison]

@xavierfacq sure, that would work. The "release notes" looks a bit lonely on that wide screen too, so maybe we could include a link to the installation pages alongside it too (or something equally relevant).

I will add that we have recently agreed to spend some money on improving the look and feel of parts of the website, including the homepage, download page, and post-download "thanks" page. So while it is good for you to continue improving these at the moment, please don't be disappointed if they end up changed again in a few months time. It would be great if you would give your opinion on what we need from a new and modern page design when we engage with the designers in the next few weeks.

[xavierfacq]

Regarding the point 4: No default sort order? Should initially be by (a) priority then (b) component.

The actual default sort is "priority" ASC. There is no second field.

The documentation of the component says:

The DataGrid can only sort the rows according to one criterion at a time.
To use multi-sorting, you need to upgrade to [Pro plan](https://mui.com/x/introduction/licensing/#pro-plan) or above.

I will take a look and see if I can do something to have priority and component together.

[xavierfacq]

✅ Point 4 is fixed! I will take a look at the last point 🙂

[xavierfacq]

✅ Point 12 is fixed!

I can take the point 10 but I'm not sure to understand what is expected. Can you give more details ?

[xavierfacq]

Can I have more details about the point N°10 ? Or maybe we can close this issue?