AJAX Goodness in Pulse 1.2
Pulse has always used a bit of AJAX (and plain old JavaScript) here and there to make the interface more responsive. For example, there are plenty of instances where you can test new configuration before you save it, without leaving the configuration form (a huge time saver when configuring!). We also try to avoid gratuitous use of AJAX, which seems to be popping up all over the place as the hype takes its toll. However, in Pulse 1.2 we found some key places to introduce AJAX to give users that warm and fuzzy feeling.
My personal favourite is a new widget to customise the columns in build results tables. These tables are used to summarise the most important build information throughout the Pulse UI. Over time, our customers have requested several new pieces of information to be shown in the tables. Adding them all for everyone would lead to information overload, not to mention the required screen real estate. The obvious solution was to make the table columns customisable. This is a prime case where a rich client-side UI is far more usable than a “click-refresh-click-refresh…” approach. The widget we came up with is simple: a bunch of checkboxes to choose the columns to show, and the ability to drag and drop the columns to reorder them:
Using it is a snap, and it just Feels Good. Everything happens client-side until you apply and the changes take effect by an AJAX-refresh of the underlying page.
Another prime candidate for AJAXification was the views for browsing working copies and build artifacts. We already had a treeview in place for browsing directories (e.g. during the setup wizard), and with some work adapted it to these views:
I can not tell you how much faster it is to browse around using these views! The page only loads what is needed when you first hit it, and drilling down is much, much easier.
