Projects View Mini-UX Scannability Improvement - Project Icon vs Project's Initial Enclosed in Circle

Problem to solve

Improved scannability of projects view to quickly identify a project based on a visual as opposed to solely text or the project's first character enclosed in a circle.

Further details

• Improved scannability
• Feeling of personalization
• More meaningful visual (project context) compared to project's first character enclosed in a circle
• Websites = .favicon, iOS/Android = app icon, etc. (automatically selected though maybe a manual override option)

Proposal

Automatically determine the project type and/or scan the repo for standard icon types (.favicon, ic_android.png, Icon-iOS-76.png, etc.) and use it (as they are more meaningful) in place of the current project's first character enclosed in a circle UI element.

What does success look like, and how can we measure that?

Success is when a user is more quickly able to identify the project of interest (via scanning and spotting visual icons). Additionally this is likely to bring a small smile or "that's cool" thought in the user's mind. This is hard to measure as it falls in the qualitative bucket of user experience. You could run tests to compare a user's speed in finding a project of interest with this proposed idea against the current project's first character enclosed in a circle UI element.

Links / references

Before:

After:

mentioned in issue #53503 (closed)

mentioned in issue #53520 (closed)

mentioned in issue #53570 (closed)

@derek-knox A file named logo.png will be used as the project icon if available in the project's repository.

Example:

• https://gitlab.com/issue-reproduce/project-avatar-repo
• https://gitlab.com/issue-reproduce/project-avatar-repo/blob/master/logo.png

added UX awaiting feedback project labels

@markglenfletcher Thanks for considering the feature. Is logo.png a common enough pattern to be useful? I only ask as I know .favicon would be more useful for web projects for example.

I assumed GitLab is likely to have aggregate data on what types of projects exist and from there would be able to have parsing by project type to conditionally leverage its best practice logo/icon approach. The range of project types may be too drastic to have an all encompassing solution, but maybe there's an 80/20 win possible?

added Manage [DEPRECATED] devopsmanage ~2975006 labels

removed awaiting feedback label

mentioned in issue #57963 (closed)

added [deprecated] Accepting merge requests label

removed [deprecated] Accepting merge requests label

added groupoptimize label

mentioned in issue #65896 (closed)

mentioned in issue #66222 (closed)

mentioned in merge request gitlab-org/quality/triage-ops!268 (closed)

mentioned in issue #66564 (moved)

added 1 deleted label and removed devopsmanage groupoptimize labels

Setting devopsmanage based on Manage [DEPRECATED].

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Hey!

GitLab is moving all development for both GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition into a single codebase. The current gitlab-ce repository will become a read-only mirror, without any proprietary code. All development is moved to the current gitlab-ee repository, which we will rename to just gitlab in the coming weeks. As part of this migration, issues will be moved to the current gitlab-ee project.

If you have any questions about all of this, please ask them in our dedicated FAQ issue.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/13855

You can also find more information here:

• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/13304
• https://about.gitlab.com/2019/08/23/a-single-codebase-for-gitlab-community-and-enterprise-edition/

Frequently Asked Questions

For an up to date list of questions and answers, please take a look at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/13855

What will we do with the repository names?

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/ will become https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab, and https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce will become https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss.

Why rename gitlab-ce to gitlab-foss?

Using "gitlab" and "gitlab-ce" would be confusing, so we decided to rename gitlab-ce to gitlab-foss to make the purpose of this FOSS repository more clear

I created a merge requests for CE, and this got closed. What do I need to do?

You will need to create a merge request at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/. This link will eventually redirect to https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab.

How does the licensing work in this new setup?

Everything in the ee/ directory is proprietary. Everything else is free and open source software. If your merge request does not change anything in the ee/ directory, the process of contributing changes is the same as when using the gitlab-ce repository.

Will you accept merge requests on the gitlab-ce/gitlab-foss project after it has been renamed?

No. Merge requests submitted to this project will be closed automatically.

Will I still be able to view old issues and merge requests in gitlab-ce/gitlab-foss?

Yes.

How will this affect users of GitLab CE using Omnibus?

No changes will be necessary, as the packages built remain the same.

How will this affect users of GitLab CE that build from source?

Once the project has been renamed, you will need to change your Git remotes to use this new URL. GitLab will take care of redirecting Git operations so there is no hard deadline, but we recommend doing this as soon as the projects have been renamed.

Where can I see a timeline of the remaining steps?

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/13304

Will community contributions submitted to the new "gitlab" repository be available in the new gitlab-foss repository?

Yes, these changes will be synced to gitlab-foss automatically, several times per day.

locked this issue