Commit messages unreadable in commits table
Asked by Kelly Elizabeth Hutchison:

Does anyone else find it extremely frustrating that when you go to browse the commit history to find a particular code change, you can't actually see the commit message itself.

I want to search on a particular commit I made, and all I can see is my JIRA project board tag, and after that there is space left over for about 6 characters. All that I'm able to do now is hover the mouse and wait over every single commit down the list to search for the one I'm looking for.

What is most frustrating (as a user and a fellow developer striving for good UX) is that after the final date column... there is all this empty space! So if anyone had thought about the people looking at this table on a regular basis, they could have expanded the message column with the additional space left over and made all the data visible.

Can you have a little bit more of a think on UX in this page please?


Answers:
author: Patrik S
body: Hey [@Kelly Elizabeth Hutchison](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5414149) ,

welcome to the Community!

Could you please confirm if you are referring to the Commit list page you can access from the left side menu?

I was trying to reproduce this on one of my own repositories, and the commit messages column was able to show the full message associated with my commits (more than 6 characters) :

![Screenshot 2024-05-09 at 11.29.11?AM.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/322908iF774B2CC7C9EF9A1/image-dimensions/518x203?v=v2 "Screenshot 2024-05-09 at 11.29.11?AM.png")

However, this very depends on the resolution of the screen you are accessing the page, and also the size of your browser's windows, as the message tab will be the tab changing when there's a window resize.

One option that may work to give some extra space is to collapse the left navigation bar, which will free up that space to be occupied by the commit list :

![Screenshot 2024-05-09 at 11.32.14?AM.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/322910iB1D89F0F0A6E0FCD/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2024-05-09 at 11.32.14?AM.png")

Another alternative is to clone the repository locally, so you can search the commit history using git directly :

    git log --grep=word

Hope that information helps! Let us know in case you have any questions.

Thank you, [@Kelly Elizabeth Hutchison](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5414149) !

Patrik S

comments: author: Kelly Elizabeth Hutchison
body: Thanks for getting back to me Patrik. I'm viewing the commit report straight from the side menu yes, and I'm viewing it on a laptop so I don't see why I shouldn't be able to see all the columns. I could understand reduced view if i was using a tablet or mobile, sure. Hiding the side menu does help and that opens up the message column more, but it simply doesn't make sense to me that the MOST important column of data is the one that expands and reduces with screen width. I can still never see more than half the commit message, once i've added the JIRA ref and user story code.

![image.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/322918iC73C18AF726EBB2C/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "image.png")


author: Patrik S
body: Hello [@Kelly Elizabeth Hutchison](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5414149) ,

thank you very much for your feedback.

After further testing, I was able to conclude the table does take the whole space only when no commit in the list has a build status associated with it. This is the reason why your screenshot shows a table thinner than the one I shared in my previous comment.

For that, I raised a bug ticket reporting this issue to our engineering team which you can access using the following link :

* <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BCLOUD-23236>

I would suggest you to add your vote there, since this helps both developers and product managers to understand the impact. Also, make sure you add yourself as a watcher in case you want to receive first-hand updates from that ticket. Please note that all bug fixes are implemented with [this policy](http://[https://confluence.atlassian.com/support/atlassian-cloud-bug-fix-policy-206865884.html]) in mind.

Thank you, [@Kelly Elizabeth Hutchison](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5414149) !

Patrik S


author: Kelly Elizabeth Hutchison
body: Thank you so much. I don't use the builds , so I guess that's why it's not displaying so nicely for me. I have set the issue to watching and I think I voted it an issue for my teams, so fingers crossed. Thank you


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