when a comment is left on a review in review board/mozreview it is currently displayed as a small square in the left column.

our top reviewers have strongly indicated that this is suboptimal and would prefer to match what most other code review systems do in displaying comments as an inline block on the diff. i agree — review comments are important and deserve more attention in the user interface; they should be impossible to miss.

while the upstream review board team have long said that the current display is in need of fixing, there is minimal love for the inline comments approach.

recently we worked on a plan of attack to appease both our reviewers and upstream’s requirements. :smacleod, :mconley and i talked through a wide assortment of design goals and potential issues. we have a design document and i’ve started mocking up the approach in html:

we also kicked off discussions with the upstream review board development team, and are hopeful that this is a feature that will be accepted upstream.