Re: [Ayatana] Usability - Useless effect when clicking an icon (Unity)

[Ryan Prior <ryanprior@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 4:29 AM, Peterson Silva <peterson.235@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> minimize upon click is probably a bad idea. too easy for users to
> accidentally lose their window
>
> Hmm true. So doing nothing is the best behaviour (when there's only one
> window)?

I think "doing nothing" is probably a bad behaviour; if the user
clicked there, they probably had an expectation (although
unpredictable to us, as different platforms bring different UI
baggage) as to what their click would do. If we do nothing, we defy
every expectation the user could have possibly had, at the expense of
providing no information to the user at all and making a less
confident user wonder whether ze did something wrong, is experiencing
computer lag, etc. If our official policy for consistency's sake is to
do nothing, we should still attach some function, even if just a
cosmetic one.

I suggest that if there's a single window and it's not already
focused, focus that window; and if it's already focused, put a glowing
halo border around it which stays until the user's mouse leaves the
window's Unity launcher icon. That effect is just cosmetic, but serves
a few purposes:
* ties the launcher icon to its focused window, reminding the user
that the requested window is already open and focused
* acknowledges the user's click without doing anything unexpected
(making a window disappear, etc)
* could be used to highlight open windows in screen casts and UI
demos, if the effect is pretty (and let's be realistic, this is
Ayatana, it can be gorgeous =D)

my two cents,
Ryan