Tag Archives: web components

GerritHub.io powered by Polymer

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polymer-logo

You can now use the Gerrit Code Review interface on GerritHub.io using the new Polymer-based UX. The code-name of the project is PolyGerrit.

Enabling Polymer is easy, just add “?polygerrit=1” to the regular GerritHub.io URL. or alternatively you can click on the  “PolyGerrit” link at the bottom of the GerritHub.io footer.

https://gerrithub.io/?polygerrit=1

Alternatively you can click on the  “PolyGerrit” link at the bottom of the GerritHub.io footer.

polygerrit-footer

What is Polymer and why it matters?

Polymer is a new type of library for the web, built on top of Web Components, and designed to leverage the evolving web platform on modern browsers. Differently from the traditional Gerrit GWT UX, Polymer is developed using  HTML and JavaScript and is supported and cached natively from your web browser.

Why is Gerrit moving away from GWT? Well, there are many reasons for steering direction:

  • Speed.
    With Web Components, the core building blocks of the UX are transferred once and then cached by the browser, giving a much faster and fluid user experience.
  • Multi-sized screen support.
    Web Components are “instructed” to be rendered differently on different devices, giving the best user experience and accessibility of the device’s form factor and native interactions.
  • Branding.
    By using native HTML and CSS rendering, it becomes much easier to control and customize the look and feel of Gerrit.
  • Stability.
    Web Components development allow focusing on basic building blocks that are straightforward and testable. It becomes much easier to develop much more stable and robust components.
  • Skills-set.
    Typically, web developers find themselves more comfortable in using a front-end language and have much more control of what gets generated, understood and rendered by the web browser.

GerritHub.io on mobile

One interesting feature of PolyGerrit is the mobile view of Gerrit UX.

polygerrit-on-mobile

Gerrit’s GWT interface has always been quite a challenge on small-screen devices, mainly because of the inability of being sensitive to the reorganization fo the page real estate based on the device’s form factor.

Additionally, the buttons did not have enough real estate needed for “big thumbs”.

The ability to use Polymer has opened up a wide range of possibilities of interactions and, for the first time, a real fully featured review experience “on the road”.

Big thumbs up for the new Gerrit Mobile UX !

What and when?

What is currently implemented in the new Gerrit Polymer-UX? Not much in terms of screens, but a lot of the core functionality of the Code Review: the changes list and the review panels. What is missing? All the other Gerrit screens more dedicated to the management of the platform and the account, the projects and groups listing, and all the support for the UX plugins.

The PolyGerrit project announced at the Gerrit User Summit 2016 last year that they are making good progress and expect to have the first “production-ready” release by Feb/Mar 2017. In the meantime, all the code is stable and the current screens are good enough to be used on a daily basis.

Do I still need the GWT UX?

Yes, at least for the functionality that isn’t available yet in PolyGerrit. To switch back to GWT, simply add “?polygerrit=0” to the target URL.

https://gerrithub.io/?polygerrit=0

Credits

Many thanks to the Google’s PolyGerrit Team, lead by Andrew Bonventre, which started the Polymer support for Gerrit UX. A special thank to David Ostrovsky, who implemented the Gerrit switcher support to enable to use both GWT-UI and PolyGerrit-UI at the same time.