Fit more text in Activity Log events

[simison]

Would be great to have more text visible for activities in the Activity log.

For example setting changed events aren't that long and would probably fit if there would be just little bit more space:

The same for other simple events like "Update avail..."

Step 1	Step 2

Google Gmail Android has similar looking listing and they fit quite a bit more meaningful text in each row: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.gm

Suggestions:

• Could each row for activities be just a tad bit taller like so and the text just a little bit smaller so that we could fit two rows of meaningful content in?
• Perhaps also icons could be smaller like they are when the card is extended:
• Could cards extend in the list view? I find myself jumping back-and-forth just to reveal one or two extra words. It would be neat if the card would just expand in the list and I could continue scrolling right away.

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Tested on Mi A1, Android 8

[0nko]

Hey @iamthomasbishop, would you please take a look at this? This is how the title & summary are ordered on the web, too. But it does make sense to have it reversed to fit more text.

[mattmiklic]

Google Gmail Android has similar looking listing and they fit quite a bit more meaningful text in each row: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.gm

Could each row for activities be just a tad bit taller like so and the text just a little bit smaller so that we could fit two rows of meaningful content in?

Right now what's shown above uses standard Material Design-defined text sizes for list items. The length of the messages shown in Activity Log is an issue we discussed during the design phase, but we made the decision to match the way messages are formatted on the web to reduce confusion. My personal preference would be for Activity Log to show a short title message along with a longer detail message, so that we could format them similarly to the Gmail example you showed: a one-line, larger title and a multi-line, smaller description. As far as I understand it that's not currently possible with the way Activity Log works on the backend.

Perhaps also icons could be smaller like they are when the card is extended

Right now the icons are sized according to the Material Design standard for images in a list view. If there were a significant upside to reducing their size we'd consider it for sure, but given the restraints I mentioned above, I don't think this change alone would do much good.

Other things to consider: If the user has opted for larger font sizes, even making the proposed changes wouldn't eliminate all truncation. Additionally, since tapping any list item opens a new view where all the details are visible, I'm not sure how urgent of an issue this is.

Could cards extend in the list view? I find myself jumping back-and-forth just to reveal one or two extra words. It would be neat if the card would just expand in the list and I could continue scrolling right away.

Yeah, we talked about this during the design phase as well. On Android there's a standard component that gives us collapsible cards. There is no standard component like that on iOS, but we custom-built one for Plugins that we could potentially re-use here. It would require going back to the design phase to figure out how it interacts though, so I think it's worth asking whether that's the best use of our time and resources at this point. My hunch is that the existing activity log design works well enough for what we need it to do right now, and we could revisit this idea in the future (i.e., if we do end up changing the way messages are formatted).

[simison]

Thanks @mattmiklic for elaborating, that all makes sense. 👍

What do you think about allowing two lines for the message so that they would much more likely fit in the view without extra tap?

Extra tap would be then only required to see the author and the exact time, which is fair.

That way skimming through the list would be much more enjoyable, without needing to tap each item open.

[mattmiklic]

On Friday I'm getting together with @keoshi, @michaelarestad, and possibly a few other designers to do a design review on Activity Log (both web and mobile). I think it'd make sense to see what action items we come away with after that call, as we've talked about the possibility of making some changes to the way these messages are formatted that might address the issue in this ticket. I'll report back here after we've done our review.

[keoshi]

We're going to discuss this more in-depth on friday, but just wanted to leave some thoughts on this for future reference:

show a short title message along with a longer detail message, so that we could format them similarly to the Gmail example you showed: a one-line, larger title and a multi-line, smaller description

I would argue the Gmail example is very different from what we're trying to achieve here. More often that not, the Gmail first-liner shows a person's name which is highly pertinent. On the Activity though, the small line (doesn't matter what order it's in) merely displays meta information, not unlike what we currently have in Posts, Pages, Comments, and more:

Initially, this was added as a meta action-type identifier in addition to the icon on the left, and the detailed information was meant to represent the item (real) description.

I'm not at all opposed to following the guidelines of a particular design system, but I'd think about breaking away from certain conventions to avoid hurting the usefulness of this tool.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been marked as stale because:

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Please comment with an update if you believe this issue is still valid or if it can be closed. This issue will also be reviewed for validity and priority (cc @designsimply).

[megsfulton]

@mattmiklic - Any updated thoughts on this one?

[mattmiklic]

I don't think there are -- but this is probably very relevant to upcoming work on Jetpack features, cc: @osullivanchris @folletto @eeeeevon13.