elementary-dev-community team mailing list archive

[Daniel Foré <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Cassidy, that's a really good point about tooltips. We have a description
of the app available at any time there.

As far as translations go, I'm not sure how Android does it, but on iOS I
have some system apps which are translated (Settings > Ajustes, Clock >
Reloj, etc) and I have a lot of branded apps which aren't translated like
"iTunes" "App Store" "Facebook" etc.

Maybe I don't notice it really being bilingual, but I don't have any
expectation for branded names to be translated. It's that apps name just
like my name is mine. Maybe the pronunciation is different in your language
(feisbuc anyone? :p) But I don't expect it to say "Red Social" or anything
like that.

I think what this comes back to is how do we decide which apps deserve a
brand name, and which apps don't.

>From what I can see, almost all 3rd-party apps are going to have a branded
name. So there is no way you're going to avoid having a mix of branded and
non-branded names (unless we have brands for everything and never use
generic names, which I don't think is necessarily productive).

If I'm a third party app developer, like Twitter, I want users to see my
brand. Not, "Microblogging Client". And in the case of a successful (viral)
marketing campaign, users are going to respond much more positively to
"Twitter" than to a techno-jargon generic name.

Additionally, many brand guidelines (in fact any that I've ever seen)
explicitly mention not adjusting the logotype to contain additional works
or characters. If I'm Twitter, the name "Twitter" is very important to me.
This is my brand. "Twitter Microblogging Client" is a distortion of my
brand. I would break HIG all day every day here, because my own brand
guidelines are very important to me.

Brands evoke emotive responses in users. I'm not sure about anyone else,
but just seeing "Web Browser" my brain automatically goes "Oh man, this is
gonna be a piece of crap". The default browser of an OS automatically gets
a bad rap. Having a confident branded image says, "Hey I'm not a POS
generic default browser, I'm badass."

On the other hand, for simple tasks or system apps, I don't have this
expectation. I don't think I've ever tried to replace my default
"Calculator" or "Weather" or "Calendar" app.

So I think we have two classes of app (name):

1. Non-branded apps. Usually small, single-purpose, default, and/or
"system" apps like Clock, Calculator, Settings, Weather, etc that users
don't really expect to remove/replace. Usually not cross-platform.

2. Branded apps. Reasonably complex, usually third party (but sometimes
default) apps that users feel strongly about like Chrome, iTunes, Twitter,
Pandora, Facebook. These apps fight a little more to stay default on a
user's desktop. They may be "cross-platform" (In our case, this includes
Ubuntu, Mint, etc) and can potentially replace default apps on other OS's.



On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Cassidy James <c@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> A branded name is a branded name. "Microsoft Windows" is not translated to
> localized languages because it's a branded name. "iTunes" isn't translated.
> "Firefox" isn't translated. "Ubuntu" isn't translated. "Rhythmbox" isn't
> translated. "Gmail" isn't translated. Etc.
>
> As Dan said, if an app isn't obvious by its name and icon, that's an issue
> with the app. The launcher should show the name of the app, not just what
> it does. If there is any confusion, the tooltip with the (translated)
> GenericName can help.
>
> Regards,
> Cassidy James
> On Jul 24, 2012 3:33 AM, "Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff" <
> sergey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Showing just the branded name is a terrible idea from the
>> internationalization point of view - most application names are in English,
>> which means understanding what the app does requires decent knowledge of
>> English.* IMO it's a bad idea to impose such requirements on our users.
>>
>> I'm yet to run into any truncated results in Slingshot, but I agree long
>> labels are not a good idea either. Slingshot full of them would be the
>> classic "TL;DR".
>>
>> So GenericName looks like the best option for Slingshot's main view to me.
>>
>> *I have not even mentioned apps in more obscure languages like Eidete
>> (Greek) or Midori (Japanese).
>>
>> --
>> Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
>>
>


-- 
Best Regards,

Daniel Foré

elementaryos.org