Improve the flow of input on the request creation page

[scott-taubman]

Currently the top two fields on the request creation page are "Comment" and "Instance". Depending on the command and setup, these are two fields that may never get and input, and yet they're the first thing you see and then the parameters that you care about are more than halfway down the page, which some users understandably see as pretty annoying. In the case of the Comment field, it feels like its importance is overly emphasized. Instance is a required field in some cases, so it is important that it be easy to find and set, but it's placement is still awkward, especially given that it gets an entire row to itself.

We should rework the flow of this page so that the parameters are the prominent focus area.

[scott-taubman]

One idea might be to shove the instance select down with the execute button (since you're choosing which instance to execute on) and the push the comment over by the preview. See attached mockup. I'm sure there are other possibilities as well.

Update: Leaving this comment for context, but see later comment below about why this doesn't work.

[scott-taubman]

One idea might be to shove the instance select down with the execute button (since you're choosing which instance to execute on) and the push the comment over by the preview. See attached mockup. I'm sure there are other possibilities as well.

Actually the instance selection always being down at the bottom does not work because in the case of dynamic choice parameters you often have to select the instance before the dynamically populated choices will be available. That would mean scrolling all the way the bottom to pick the instance, then going back up to select the newly available parameters. That's obviously no good.

We could shove instance off to the side with comment and preview like in the above. Still not the most graceful solution I'm sure, but I figure I should at least update me mock-up from before since it's not really an option.