Re: [Ayatana] Unity and tooltips

[Vishnoo <vish@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2010-11-03 at 16:49 +0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Vishnoo wrote on 17/10/10 11:39:
> >...
> > We removed tooltips from gnome-panel and indicators because it did not
> > add much value[1] and instead we choose to use icons that could quickly
> > convey the same meaning.
> >...
> > Is there a reason Unity's Launcher has tooltips for applications and
> > places? [While Application icons could be considered as unrecognizable,
> > Places icons are our custom icons so they should atleast be a bit
> > recognizable.Still not sure how these tooltips are more important...]
> >...
> 
> For the most part, menu title icons convey pretty simple ideas. Network,
> sound, keyboard, power. And they stick around for a long time, so you
> can learn them.
> 
> Launcher items sometimes are simple items, but sometimes complex ones.
> And often they don't stick around as long. For instance, you might
> install a bunch of free programs that do the same thing, to compare them
> before keeping just one, and their icons may look alike. That makes text
> labels more useful for them.

Yeah, It did seem like the problem we are trying to solve here. 
But when none of the other icons of the unity panel had tooltips it
became annoying to me when the tooltips showed up for the launcher alone
and I was quite familiar with the icons i was using.

A user /might/ get used to the icon after a period of time and be able
to recognize it without tooltips, at which point it might not be
required for them.

Why not add the window's preview as well? 

Now that Unity uses compiz and compiz 0.9 is able to do windows preview
of *minimized* windows as well, why not use it in combination? [window
preview + app name]

Adding the window preview will give the user a chance to preview any
changes in the other window without switching from the current
application and loosing focus from the work.

And it might be easier/quicker for a user to recognize the application
from the app preview than from just the application name.

-- 
Cheers,
Vish