Make whitespace changes less prominent

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-Phabricator-has-over-GitHub-for-a-startup-company "It handles whitespace-only changes sanely by default, while GitHub forces you to add a parameter to the URL every single time."

Currently on https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/ca89562ccfb5f86098e9a0d9c403f3d5d7f85c7d the first change (end of line only) looks the same as the last change (rewrite of words), this makes it much harder to understand what is going on.

Can we show whitespace-only changes in yellow or something like that?

@dzaporozhets @JobV @creamzy

@sytses I will add it to 8.5 milestone and pick it up as soon as 8.4 issues for ux are done.

Milestone changed to 8.5

mentioned in issue #8693 (closed)

Can we show whitespace-only changes in yellow or something like that?

@sytses I don't want bring confusion by extra colors. Red for removed and green for added is sane default everyone get used too. I would be quite confused seeing yellow or any other color in diff. Also it requires writing new logic that parse diff for newline-only changes to properly detect one.

Now our behavior same as GitHub - add parameter to hide newline. We can make this feature more visible for cases like yours by putting button hide newline changes or something like this which reload page with adding ?w=1 to URL.

P.S. Getting diff without newline changes is separate git command call.

Milestone changed to 8.6

Removed ~19492 label

Added frontend label

@skyruler no there should be a single button for all diff. Not per file

Added ~19492 label

Reassigned to @skyruler

@skyruler also "Remove whitespace" name for button does not makes sense to me. Maybe something like "Hide whitespace changes" or "Ignore whitespace changes"

Removed ~19492 label

Assignee removed

@skyruler Logically, that button makes no sense next to Discussion, Changes and Builds. It affects only the presentation of the Changes tab, just like Inline / Side-by-side does. Should it not be next to that toggle button?

@DouweM it should appear on changes tab, and apply for whole page. actually it should be everywhere when we have diffs

@skyruler So then it makes most sense in the "Showing 1 changed file with ... Inline / Side-by-side" bar, right? That's part of the standard diff interface of MRs and commits: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/ca89562ccfb5f86098e9a0d9c403f3d5d7f85c7d

@DouweM but if you have more than 1 diff? I did this way easier and @dzaporozhets told me that this is a wrong approach

@skyruler The "Inline / Side by side" bar is only shown once for the entire page of diffs!

In https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4271#note_4188531 you added them to the file-specific bar which @dzaporozhets didn't like because it was repeated for every file. That's not the case with my suggestion :)

@DouweM is right. its more logically to place it near Inline / Side-by-side buttons as both affects diffs output and are single buttons on page. cc @skyruler

no worries ill do it

Reassigned to @alfredo1

On a Merge Request page this whitespace button should be always visible or just when we enter the changes tab? /cc @skyruler

@alfredo1 See the discussion above, it should be besides Inline / Side-by-side on the Changes tab.

mentioned in merge request !3367 (merged)

Milestone changed to 8.7

@alfredo1 it should be besides Inline / Side-by-side

@skyruler @DouweM @dzaporozhets This issue should be updated with a single source of truth in the description. I can't tell what was decided for the title of the button although it appears that it should be "Remove whitespace", but I am not 100% sure.

I think a user might get confused if the button says "Remove whitespace" because that sounds like something that might be persisted. I think "Toggle whitespace" or "Hide whitespace changes" is clearer.

I agree @rspeicher. I like "toggle whitespace" best. @skyruler good with you? @alfredo1 lets go for that.

@jschatz1 you are native speakers, I can't argue about that lol

it should be besides Inline / Side-by-side on the Changes tab.

Yes

I think "Toggle whitespace" or "Hide whitespace changes" is clearer.

Agree

cc @jschatz1

Status changed to closed by commit c01ff1f5

mentioned in commit c01ff1f5

Mentioned in commit pfjason/gitlab-ce@c01ff1f5