TYPO3 Core

famfamfam's silk icon set also offers bullet_red, bullet_orange / bullet_yellow, and bullet_green icons, though they may be too small.

Actually, that's something I wanted to do but eventually forgot ;-)

It would probably be good then to have a "Refresh" button which just reloads the page to check for updated status. It's more user-friendly than having to click on the "Scheduler" item in the main menu.

I'm unconvinced about this change. I agree that it is good to show if a job is currently running, but I don't think the colored bullets add any value with regards to readability/usability. On the contrary - even with the legend - I think the color codes give a wrong impression. For example, red is generally associated with a failure. But a stopped job is not an error. It's just a job which has no planned execution.

I would like to drop those bullets. I would propose the following instead:

- for jobs are planned or not scheduler, the last column "Next execution" seems enough to me.
- for jobs that are running, I would simply add the mention "Running..." instead of a date in the "Next execution" column.

If you really want to introduce a graphical element to represent running tasks, I would say we could use some kind of animated loading icon, where you placed the colored bullets. A fixed icon (or nothing) for tasks that don't run, and an animated icon for currently running tasks).

What do you think?

Francois Suter wrote:

I'm unconvinced about this change. I agree that it is good to show if a job is currently running, but I don't think the colored bullets add any value with regards to readability/usability. On the contrary - even with the legend - I think the color codes give a wrong impression. For example, red is generally associated with a failure. But a stopped job is not an error. It's just a job which has no planned execution.

I would like to drop those bullets. I would propose the following instead:

- for jobs are planned or not scheduler, the last column "Next execution" seems enough to me.
- for jobs that are running, I would simply add the mention "Running..." instead of a date in the "Next execution" column.

It might be good to know the time for the next execution nevertheless, especially with long running tasks, indexing/crawling the page or sending direct mail newsletters f.e..

If you really want to introduce a graphical element to represent running tasks, I would say we could use some kind of animated loading icon, where you placed the colored bullets. A fixed icon (or nothing) for tasks that don't run, and an animated icon for currently running tasks).

What do you think?

Well, I'd really like to stay with the bullets. However, I noticed the "red bullet problem" myself, too already. Therefore I'd suggest to change it to gray. At first I had the bullets in a separate column, but that too much space so that other columns would break their content to two lines. Thus I removed the column and put the status in front of the task name.
I really think that the bullets are a quick way to get an overview about scheduled and running tasks without having to read a column at the end of the table and having to "parse" its value, especially when there're more then just one task configured. I also believe and hope that many extensions that are using dedicated cron jobs now, will switch to the scheduler, which will make the bullets even more valuable.

Well, I'd really like to stay with the bullets. However, I noticed the "red bullet problem" myself, too already. Therefore I'd suggest to change it to gray.

Just got an idea bout the red bullets and the failure you mentioned. The red bullet could still be an indicator for #4019 - when a task actually didn't run successfully...

BTW I'm still not totally happy with the icons, but I agree that they are a useful visual help. They can be changed later. I feel the yellow is nearly as disturbing as the red. It's generally more indicative of warning and there's no reason why a scheduled task should be considered a warning. I thought that maybe we could do variants of the clockwork you took from the silk icons.

Anyway it's ok as it is now and I'll come back to that when more pressing points have been addressed.

Francois Suter wrote:

BTW I'm still not totally happy with the icons, but I agree that they are a useful visual help. They can be changed later. I feel the yellow is nearly as disturbing as the red. It's generally more indicative of warning and there's no reason why a scheduled task should be considered a warning.

Well, depending on the importance of the task and how much it's running late, a warning could be the right thing.

I thought that maybe we could do variants of the clockwork you took from the silk icons.
Anyway it's ok as it is now and I'll come back to that when more pressing points have been addressed.

Hmm, just leave them as they are I'd say :)

After thinking some more I have found what disturbs me: currently the 3 status represent mixed pieces of information, which is confusing. Those 3 pieces are:

1. task is running or not
2. task is scheduled or not
3. task is late or not

These are 3 different things and cannot be mixed. IMO the "running" information is "dominant", i.e. if a task is currently running that's all there is to display. If the task is not running, then we can differentiate between scheduled and non-scheduled. Lastly, if a task is scheduled, then it may be late. So we end up with only 4 statuses:

1. running
2. not running, not scheduled
3. not running, scheduled, in the future
4. not running, scheduled, late

Comments?

Francois Suter wrote:

Seems to be not quite correct yet. Look at attached screenshot: 2 tasks are scheduled to run, however they do not appear in yellow, they appear in grey as "stopped". This is a wrong information.

The screen is totally correct actually. The tasks turn yellow only when they're late. So what's wrong or not clear enough is the label maybe.

And I'm really not happy about the information displayed here. I'll try to make another proposal, but I don't have time just right now. I'm opening the issue again as I don't consider it resolved.

what do you mean?

1. running
2. not running, not scheduled
3. not running, scheduled, in the future
4. not running, scheduled, late

Comments?

too complicated and too detailed IMO. I'd like to keep it simple.

How can a task be "not scheduled"?
Also not running, scheduled in the future to me is the same as not running, as a all tasks are scheduled to run in the future, aren't they? So all tasks are scheduled.

comments on the comments? ;)

Ingo Renner wrote:

The screen is totally correct actually. The tasks turn yellow only when they're late. So what's wrong or not clear enough is the label maybe.

BTW: check the source where the status is set, you'll see that it's correct, but the label might be not...

I finally came back to this one, now that the status are all settled. I changed the following things:

1. I renamed the status, bullet and labels for "scheduled" to use "late" instead, as this is really what this status is about
2. I renamed the status, bullet and labels for "stopped" to use "scheduled" instead, as this seems more correct and "stopped" was really confusing for tasks that are going to run at some point
3. I slightly changed the labels of a couple of statuses, to make them more explicit

In r1145