Re: Improvements to app promotion (Editor's Picks and Featured)

[Joaquim Rocha <jrocha endlessm com>]

Hi Robert,

At Endless we have a few downstream patches to make the Featured view work for us but in our case it's simpler because we don't deal with "packages" other than Flatpak. One "hack" I have used sometimes is to modify the list that's given in the plugins' method overrides: e.g. you keep your snap plugin running after the hardcoded-popular plugin, but you empty the GsAppList that's given as an argument to gs_flatpak_add_popular/featured (which should have the apps added by the previous plugins at that time). This allows us to modify the expected results from within one plugin.

Anyway, it won't solve everything (like the shuffling of apps) but just wanted to share this "technique" in case it helps.

Cheers,

Joaquim Rocha  |  Endless

On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 5:48 AM, Robert Ancell <robert ancell gmail com> wrote:

Hi all,

I'm currently looking at how we can make better use of the app promotion on the overview page in Ubuntu. I'll throw out some ideas we're trying and would love to get some feedback / design input on these.

1. We wanted to show snaps before .deb packages for promotion (we were using the hardcoded list and highly rated packages for .debs). The solution I came up with was to run the snap plugin before the hardcoded-popular plugin [1] and drop using the ratings. This means the hardcoded plugin doesn't populate the list if the snap plugin already has [2]. I suspect the same change should be made for the FlatPak and AppStream plugins (might require some splitting)?

2. We're trying using the first "featured" snap as the snap shown in the Featured section (the remaining snaps go to Editor's Picks). This doesn't suppress the hard-coded featured app (builder) since that requires 5 featured apps to suppress. I think the hardcoded plugin should only work if there are no promoted apps [3] since only one app is ever shown as featured?

3. The Editor's Picks are currently randomized (changing daily). The snap featured apps are intended to be in an ordered list. I was thinking of adding an optional index to each app so that they could remain ordered (items using the same index can be randomized so existing behaviour is preserved). This also solves point 1 using a different method.

4. It would be desirable to be able to browse all the editor's picks even if only 5 can be shown. Some of the code suggests this would be desirable - any designs for how to scroll / expand the list?

Thanks,

--Robert

[1] https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-software/commit/?id=db091df21bc21136f714b2bb500b56caf19f5c0e
[2] https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-software/tree/plugins/core/gs-plugin-hardcoded-popular.c#n53
[3]
--- a/plugins/core/gs-plugin-hardcoded-featured.c
+++ b/plugins/core/gs-plugin-hardcoded-featured.c
@@ -59,7 +59,7 @@ gs_plugin_add_featured (GsPlugin *plugin,
        guint i;
 
        /* we've already got enough featured apps */
-       if (gs_app_list_length (list) >= 5)
+       if (gs_app_list_length (list) > 0)
                return TRUE;
 
        /* just add all */

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