New Plugins Settings Page Is Not As Functional And A Step Backwards
The new plugins settings page at first glance looks nicer than the previous one.
However, it soon becomes apparent that it has sacrificed a lot of functionality for these looks.
The first thing is that there is no "All" tab.
If you search for a plugin it is not found until you go to the Trending tab, click Show All then type in your search.
You are now searching in the Trending tab when your results are not trending, which doesn't make sense.
The next thing is that is harder to see when the plugin was updated and how many downloads there have been.
Previously there was a column for each and you could easily scan down.
Now it is mixed up with the description and you have to scan backwards and forwards and up and down trying to find the information.
Previously I could see 22 plugins on one view and now I can only see 8.
You need an option like in Gmail where you can set how compact you want your view to be.
Previously I had a drop down to all me to filter by All, Enabled, Disabled, Bundled and Custom.
There might be a way to do that with search keywords but I'd rather have a button than learn what the new syntax is.
Previously I could click on the list and the details appeared in the preview on the right.
Now in order to see the details I get taken away from my search result view.
Previously when I would search the plugins it would return fast enough to seem instantly.
It would also filter on each letter as I type.
Now it takes over 5 seconds and only shows results when I click enter.
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Totally agree.
It is a usability bug that it offers no option to "Search in all plugins". It seems I can only search in "trending plugins", but it apparently finds results in all plugins.
Also the trend to bigger IU items and less functionality annoys me endlessly. There is nothing wrong with good old tables, especially in a desktop UI. With a good table UI you can view many items at once, sort by column, have column filters, reorder and remove/add columns. Additionally it is much easier to scan for information, because everything is nicely aligned, while in the "itemized UI" my eyes have to jump around the screen a lot.
But I am afraid that this trend towards dumbed down UIs will continue for a couple of years. I guess it's because current designers have grown up on the mobile web.
What is interesting is that if you open a file of an unrecognised type that has a plugin available, the good old table view with description pane on the right appears!