Hi all,

I'm implementing a new online migration dialog for selecting the migration 
target.
(This tool is will be available only for SLE12, for openSUSE it does not make 
sense
as the product cannot be registered in the SUSE Customer Center (SCC).)

The new online migration tool will find all installed products in the system 
and ask
the registration server for possible migrations to new service pack(s).

The response from the server will contain all allowed combinations to all 
available
products and extensions. E.g. [ SLES-12-SP1 + Extension-Foo-SP1, SLES-12-SP1 +
Extension-Foo-GA (if the GA version is supported on SLES SP1), ...]
That means there could be potentially quite a lot of possible migration targets.

User can select just one migration target in the dialog which will be applied 
to the
system.


The problem is how to design the UI. Here are some my ideas with screenshots
(mockups). The screenshots were taken in the minimal supported resolution 
(800x600 in
GUI, 80x25 chars in text mode) to see the minimal available space for widgets.



RadioButtons
------------

Qt: http://paste.opensuse.org/3268571
ncurses: http://paste.opensuse.org/65912174

This was the initial design as the RadioButton is the usual widget used for 
selecting
a single option from many possibilities.

+ (IMO) clear meaning for the users (one from many selection).
- It's not possible to scroll the list if it is longer than the available space,
  in that case some RadioButtons will be missing. That's clearly visible in the
  ncurses screenshot, if there was one more installed product (or one more 
migration
  target) then the UI would break...


SelectionBox (with multi-line values)
------------------------------------

Qt: http://paste.opensuse.org/34590676
ncurses: http://paste.opensuse.org/65761791

+ Scrollable list, no problem with many migration targets.
- There is no separator in the list, it's not clear how many migrations are 
there
  and what each migration includes unless you click on some line.
- Ncurses UI does not support multi-line values (only the first line is 
displayed).


SelectionBox (with single line values) + RichText (with details)
----------------------------------------------------------------

Qt: http://paste.opensuse.org/45144130
ncurses: http://paste.opensuse.org/56893356

Similar to the previous one, but there are short product names used on a single
line in the SelectionBox. Additionally there is a RichText with details of the
selected migration target. (The screenshot shows just the full product names, 
but we
could simply add more details like the list of the migration repositories, the
repository URLs, whatever...)

+ Both widgets are scrollable.
+ Works in both Qt and Ncurses UI properly.
- More complicated for users, not obvious how the dialog works and what is 
expected
  from the user.


So far the last solution looks the best for me. What do you think about it?
Any suggestions or ideas how to improve it? Or even a completely different 
design?

[Adding Ken to CC...]


--

Best Regards

Ladislav Slezák
Yast Developer
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