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Bug 317819

Summary:	Purpose of having multiple solution catalogs isn't obvious
Product:	[Technology] MPC	Reporter:	Peter Friese <peter>
Component:	wizard	Assignee:	Benjamin Muskalla <b.muskalla>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	P3	CC:	ian.skerrett
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	1.4.2
Hardware:	PC
OS:	Mac OS X - Carbon (unsup.)
Whiteboard:

Description Peter Friese

2010-06-24 09:36:30 EDT

On the first page of the MPC wizard, I get to choose a solution catalog. It's not transparent to the user (a) what a solution catalog is and (b) what's the relative merit of the various solution catalogs is.

I guess this situation must even be worse for new users. As a long-time Eclipse citizen, I do know that EclipseSource provides some kind of "hardened" bundle pool, but a little bit more detail than just one single line of explanation would really be appreciated.

Comment 1 David Green

2010-07-08 13:36:43 EDT

Thanks for the bug.  Agreed, it should be more obvious as to what this page is about and what it means to select a marketplace.

Comment 2 Benjamin Muskalla

2011-07-20 18:04:56 EDT

I wonder if the new UI design of the different catalogs made it better.

Peter, any input on this one? If not, I'd close this.

Comment 3 Peter Friese

2011-07-21 06:14:24 EDT

(In reply to comment #2)
> I wonder if the new UI design of the different catalogs made it better.
> 
> Peter, any input on this one? If not, I'd close this.

I do like the new UI and agree it has made things a little better in this regard, as the catalog selection area is much more non-obtrusive now. This will help new users to not be confused by having to select a catalog.

However, my main concern hasn't been addressed by this UI change. I think it is important to clearly state *what exactly* the various catalogs offer and how they differ. IMO, it would be sufficient if the info popup of the catalogs would show some information along the lines of "hey, this is the default catalog, you get all things open source here" and "this is the EclipseSource catalog, you get all things open source here, AND we did some extra verifications to protect you from downloading malicious code".

Comment 4 Benjamin Muskalla

2011-07-21 09:24:31 EDT

I wonder if this really is a problem of MPC itself or rather with the catalog descriptions the individual catalogs provide. _Hovering_  over the catalogs will give you these information but maybe the catalog providers could improve their descriptions.

Comment 5 Peter Friese

2011-07-21 10:04:05 EDT

(In reply to comment #4)
> I wonder if this really is a problem of MPC itself or rather with the catalog
> descriptions the individual catalogs provide. _Hovering_  over the catalogs
> will give you these information but maybe the catalog providers could improve
> their descriptions.

I agree - catalog providers should provide a good description for their catalog.

Comment 6 Benjamin Muskalla

2011-07-21 10:24:51 EDT

Ian, anything we can do about getting the catalog providers to improve their description to reflect the contents of the different marktetplaces?

Comment 7 Carsten Reckord

2015-11-24 12:08:59 EST

I think we can close this. The (by now quite old) new UI makes the catalog choice less obtrusive, and the descriptions for the two remaining marketplaces are quite decent as well.