Better expand/collapse behavior for Task Output, and "Interesting" mode

[slimflem]

I just upgraded from 1.6.x to 2.x, and I must say, I am a little disappointed in the new UI for deployment tasks, however, I do like the new UI as a whole. It's great. Nice work. However, the 1.6 deployment task page version was great. It was on the right track. Everything was wide open and easy to see at once. I could 'Expand All', scroll the page just to where I wanted it, and watch the rest fill in as the deployment happened.

The new version is, unfortunately, very busy and hard to deal with. What once used to be at most, 2 clicks, to get a full view of an active deployment, I must now, numerous times, click 'Expand All' after clicking 'Task Log'. The new design of multiple nested boxes/tables is, IMHO, too much, difficult, and slightly abusive. This adds up when pushing numerous releases every day. Us crazy-verbose-lovin'-logging-stats types, like to stare at screens while things happen and see all the details. The new UI is kinda like msbuild on Quite mode vs. Detailed.

For my usage, as a software developer, I would MUCH prefer a real-time scrolling version of your Raw view, much like the options that TeamCity offers for an active build log. An option to default all the boxes on the new 2.x version to 'opened all the time' mode, would be great.

A different type approach to the deployment task log could be to provide tabs somewhere at the top that represent each machine involved in a release where each of the tabs is showing its verbose deployment logging as it happens, scrolling the viewport for you while leaving all the important stuff around that anchored. If the tabs could be real-time scrolling with an option of pausing/unpausing the stream, that'd be pretty awesome.

I'm asking a lot here, I realize that. Just getting it out there. :)

[PaulStovell]

Thanks for the feedback here! I'm making two changes:

1. When you click to expand all, the action is now "sticky" - as new nodes are added they will be expanded. Expand errors and collapse all also work the same way. Expanding/collapsing individual nodes removes the stickyness.
2. Added an "Interesting" mode which when active will expand any running or failed nodes. This is now the default when you open the task output.

The interesting mode seems to work nicely - when you open the task output, you'll automatically see the output from whatever script/deployment action is currently running. When they finish they get collapsed, and the next running node is automatically open. Clicking "expand all" multiple times should now be a thing of the past.

[PaulStovell]

Example: I've just opened this running task and clicked Task Output - I haven't had to click to expand anything. The currently running activities are automatically expanded, and they automatically collapse when finished.

[PaulStovell]

Another improvement: in the screenshot above, some nodes only have one child (for example, if I deployed to multiple machines, "Step: 2: Cloudy" would have multiple child nodes, but in this case it only has one).

When you click to expand a node, and that node only has one child, then that child will also expand, and so on. So clicking to expand "Step 2: Cloudy" will expand all the way down to "Deploy Octopus.Sample.FtpWebSite on Web01" (it has multiple child nodes).

[PaulStovell]

Will be in 2.3

[lock]

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