Extensions Description need truncated

[JeffryBooher]

I suggest we find a reasonable number of characters and add ellipsis. Also no need to display keywords

[le717]

Taking a random sampling of descriptions, the longest one I found (after the one shown in your image, which for reference is 728 characters) is 247 characters. The rest seem to fall between 120-140. Of course, these are by no means perfectly accurate figures (an automated process will do better).

As for a suitable limit, I'd say a max of 250 characters. Consider Twitter's limit is 140 and people can get can get their message across, I would think 250 characters would be plenty enough for developers to describe their extension. Optionally, to avoid awkwardly cutting off the description in the middle of the word, the description could be cut at the last space. I took a quick screenshot showing what this would look like + the removal of tags, which ended up lowering the description you showed down to 242 characters.

Bit of rough, non-Brackets integrated code:

var descriptionLimit = 250;
var desc = "This minified(only 37kb) extension puts Brackets on steroids without cluttering your menus: Text Transforms(UpperCase, LowerCase, Capitalize, CamelCase, HtmlEncode, HtmlDecode, UrlEncode, Join, Split, Number, Trim Leading, Trim Trailing, Sort Ascending, Sort Descending, Remove Duplicates, Remove Empty Lines, Unix To Win, Win To Unix, Single Slash To Double, Double To Single Slash, rgb-hex, Markdown Trim Trailing, Function JSDoc), Clipboard(Copy Filename, Copy Fullname, Regnize, ExtratortoIX, Html Report), ReplacetoIX(Replace including Words only, Selection only, Multiline, Regnize, History), Internet Search(Open Url, Web Search), Compiler(scss, js6 [ECMAScript 6]). Read the readme for the complete description and usage";

// Shorten the description down to 250 characters
if (desc.length > descriptionLimit) {
    desc = desc.substr(0, descriptionLimit);
}

// To prevent awkard addition of ellipsis, try to add them at the end of the last whole word
if (desc.lastIndexOf(" ") < descriptionLimit) {
    desc = desc.substr(0, parseInt(desc.lastIndexOf(" "))) + "...";
}

[lkcampbell]

Truncation with ellipses implies that there is a way to view the entire description if the user wants to view it. Do we even have a way to do that if we choose to truncate the description? Maybe a mouseover tooltip with full description?

Another idea, scrollable description field.

[lkcampbell]

cc'ing @larz0 for his ideas.

[lkcampbell]

One more comment, I do agree that we don't necessarily need the keywords to be listed. They just need to be available for the search process.

[le717]

Will comment further when not on mobile. Just wanted to say I've already implemented truncating descriptions and keyword removal on the issue-8216 branch on my fork, just need to fix the last failing unit test. Will post link and more information when on my laptop.

No, there is no way to view full descriptions. Scrolling... that would look odd IMO. Ellipses are used in English literature to denote "There is more to this quote, but it is not applicable here". That could mean the same thing here.

[marcelgerber]

A cool way to deal with the expansion would be to make the ellipsis link-style and clickable.
When the user clicks, the description will be expanded.

Btw @le717, I added a few comments to your commit (https://github.com/le717/brackets/commit/ee96eba89639c92d17a5ae7b15c0c3fd8a4e2f26)

[larz0]

@SAplayer I like that 👍

[le717]

@SAplayer @larz0 I like that too. 👍

@SAplayer Thanks for commenting (even though I have not submitted it as a PR). I just pushed changes that will fix the last failing test + other changes. ;)

Oh yea, link. https://github.com/le717/brackets/tree/issue-8216

[le717]

@larz0 Question for you. Once the linked ellipsis is added, should they go away upon being clicked or pull double duty and restore the shortened description?

I have the visual part (mostly) in (aside from the question above), now I just need to add the code to support it (again from the question). Is 250 characters a good limit, or does it need to be shorter? It only affects a small part of descriptions, the rest are under that length. Screenshot so far:

PR is at #8282.

[larz0]

@le717 would be nice if we can minimize the descriptions when they're no longer visible. Maybe we can also limit the initial description to 140 chars because there's a lot of extensions now.

[le717]

@larz0 Sounds good to me too. I kinda thought that is what you wanted. ;) I just have to find the proper place the put the code (and maybe still move the shortening process to StringUtils like @SAplayer suggested) and this should be done (aside from unit tests if requested)!

[larz0]

Rad, thanks @le717!