We separated activity directives and simulated activities in the timeline to better match the Aerie approach for scheduling. This can add many (thousands+) additional items to render on the timeline, significantly complicating the timeline. This also separated the information in a directive from a span, making it more difficult to understand what’s editable and whats generated procedurally.
Current design issues
Lots of extra items to render
Clicking on a span doesn't show params that can be edited
Clicking on a directive doesn't show span details
Icons add a lot of visual noise to the timeline.
Borders to the rectangle add additional noise, and increase the number of elements to draw.
Border radius doesn’t add value, and reduces the crispiness of the edges.
Design direction
Unify spans and directives on timeline
Clicking either a span or directive shows related info in instance details panel, this can be collapsed
Use typography and opacity alone to indicate simulation status. Activity directive thats not simulated is lighter and italic. This differentiates simulation status, even for zero duration simulated activities.
Vertical bar to represent directives.
Moving a simulated directive breaks it apart from the span, showing the stale span's duration, as well as a stale view of duration at new directive location.
Should we keep the inline editing of the directive name or move it back to a form field? If we keep it, do we have the button live inline with the collapse?
Where should the directive specific actions like changelog, delete, lock, errors/warnings, etc live?
Overview
We separated activity directives and simulated activities in the timeline to better match the Aerie approach for scheduling. This can add many (thousands+) additional items to render on the timeline, significantly complicating the timeline. This also separated the information in a directive from a span, making it more difficult to understand what’s editable and whats generated procedurally.
Current design issues
Design direction
Moving a simulated directive
Selection picks both directive and span