Make Qubes Template Manager workflow more intuitive

[andrewdavidwong]

How to file a helpful issue

The problem you're addressing (if any)

The Qubes Template Manager is a handy tool, but some aspects of the workflow are counterintuitive:

• Checking all rows that use the same template requires clicking three times: First click checks the clicked row. Second click checks all other rows using the same template but unchecks the clicked row. Third click re-checks the clicked row.
• Using "Change all selected to" leaves all checked rows checked. In order to move onto a different batch of qubes, the user has to manually uncheck all the checked rows. Worse yet, while double-clicking works for checking multiple rows, it doesn't work for unchecking multiple rows. Instead, the user has to manually click every checked row (or just exit the tool and open it again).
• When making lots of changes, pressing "OK" appears to hang. In fact, this is normal, because the tool is doing a lot of work in the background. But many users won't know that. All they see is that the program appears to freeze for a while, then closes, which is often what happens when a program crashes.
• After the tool is done working, there is no indication to the user whether the changes were successful or not.
• After the tool is done working, it closes itself. If the user wanted to make more changes, they have to go back into the menu and re-open the program. There's no way to make just some changes, see the results, then make more changes, while staying inside the tool. It's all or nothing, a single use per session.

The solution you'd like

These problems could be solved by making a few quality-of-life tweaks while preserving the core design and functionality:

• Double-clicking any row should check or uncheck all rows sharing the same current template, including the row being clicked.
• Using "Change all selected to" should uncheck all checked rows.
• Pressing "OK" should create some kind of progress bar or spinner.
• After the tool is done, it should report to the user whether it was successful or not (probably with some kind unobtrusive ephemeral notification, e.g., "Changes successful!" in green text somewhere in the tool's window that fades out over a couple seconds)
• The tool should not close itself. We don't know whether the user is still working. They will close it when they're done.

The value to a user, and who that user might be

All users of the Qubes Template Manager, especially newer users.