Super Simple Yet Super Useful Feature Request

[Alex]

On the packages list admin page:

1) Allow each admin to choose how many packages to view per page, rather than paginating at a static value. Currently it doesn't even fill the height of my widescreen monitor.

2) Add a column to the table that shows the Package Group. This is important because if you have:

VPS Type 1 - Package group (maybe Xen)
- Lite
- Standard
- Premium
VPS Type 2 - Package group (maybe KVM)
- Lite
- Standard
- Premium

If both use the SolusVM module, it is nearly impossible to know which is which from this interface, unless you recall the order they were added, because the names are identical without the context of the package group.

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

I always like being able to choose the number of things to display. I hate pagination and would rather scroll. If I wanted to flip pages, I'll just get a book! LOL

[Alex]

Any word from the devs on this?

[Paul]

On the packages list admin page:

1) Allow each admin to choose how many packages to view per page, rather than paginating at a static value. Currently it doesn't even fill the height of my widescreen monitor.

 

You can change the standard number of items that appear per page in the config/blesta.php config file..

 

Configure::set("Blesta.results_per_page", 20);

 

This applies to everything that is paginated though. We have plans to add a filter option at the top of most of these kinds of listings. It will be very useful for tickets, and could be useful here for packages as well, and allow you to change the default items per page, and save it for your staff member. We'll have to discuss.

 

2) Add a column to the table that shows the Package Group. This is important because if you have:

VPS Type 1 - Package group (maybe Xen)

- Lite

- Standard

- Premium

VPS Type 2 - Package group (maybe KVM)

- Lite

- Standard

- Premium

If both use the SolusVM module, it is nearly impossible to know which is which from this interface, unless you recall the order they were added, because the names are identical without the context of the package group.

 

The problem here is that a single package could be a member of many groups, or it could be a member of no groups.

 

If viewing Groups, you can click the group name to show all member packages within that group. Does this allow you to find the appropriate package that may have a similar name?

[Ken]

Pagination is so 90's.  I like the javascripty auto-populate as you scroll down method.  

[Paul]

Pagination is so 90's.  I like the javascripty auto-populate as you scroll down method.  

 

It is a neat feature, though it annoys me in some cases. I wonder if this would be a good feature request for a poll.

[Tyson]

Pagination is so 90's.  I like the javascripty auto-populate as you scroll down method.  

 

I find scrolling results incredibly annoying, especially when looking for things that I know are 10 pages away. I find it much easier to click a pagination link to go to page 10, and look around page 9/10/11 than scroll down and search. But of course, that's just me.

 

This idea is still pagination though. Your scrolling just acts as the event to fetch more results. It's the 90s with a twist.

[Cody]

I find scrolling results incredibly annoying, especially when looking for things that I know are 10 pages away. I find it much easier to click a pagination link to go to page 10, and look around page 9/10/11 than scroll down and search. But of course, that's just me.

 

Ditto on this. Especially annoying when my browser crashes because it exhausts too much memory/GPU trying to render all the results.

 

Dynamic loading is great for finite length pages that you want to load quicker, but for a set of results that could be essentially boundless it makes much less sense.

[Paul]

Dynamic loading is great for finite length pages that you want to load quicker, but for a set of results that could be essentially boundless it makes much less sense.

 

Speaking of that, I do notice that even Google images, who auto loads more results does limit the total number they will load in this manner.

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

The problem which pagination for me is that I don't know what page something is at and depending on how many items are added after I last checked, the page is not static. With scrolling I can just do a search and it will bring me down to where I need.

[Alex]

The problem which pagination for me is that I don't know what page something is at and depending on how many items are added after I last checked, the page is not static. With scrolling I can just do a search and it will bring me down to where I need.

 

I would actually prefer a simple "View All" button over the AJAXified loading myself. That stuff just seems a bit too flashy for an admin panel. I prefer a more utilitarian admin interface. AJAXified pagination/loading would be nice for something like the Knowledge Base client interface though. For the issue of not knowing the right page, I would just prefer a "View All" button. Once I've got a "View All" button, I can do a "Ctrl+F" to find what I want on the page. How hard is it to add a link that passes a GET parameter with the value "all" which triggers the back-end to omit the LIMIT on the query? It's a simple addition! The Configure::set("Blesta.results_per_page", 20); thing doesn't work all too well for me since we have like 100+ packages. If I do this, then all of my staff will have to load 100+ packages for that page, regardless of whether that is necessary. But, the groups page that Paul pointed out has become my new place to find a package, since it groups them up nicely for me, so this has all becomes less of an issue for me.

[cleverhost]

Once I've got a "View All" button, I can do a "Ctrl+F" to find what I want on the page.

 

Exactly. The AJAXified infinite scroll method won't actually fix the "I don't know what page the result is on" issue. "View All" would, paired with the Find/Search function (Ctrl + F). I get annoyed when I have to scroll or page through dozens of pages as well, so I'll put my vote in for a "View All" button instead.

[Paul]

I too am a fan of Ctrl + F, however, "View All" makes no consideration of whether the total number of packages are extremely large. Too much content can take a long time to load, and can even crash your browser. While most people probably wont have more than a hundred or two hundred packages, these are things we must consider.