On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Barry Warsaw
<barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Put me in the camp of liking the new button location. In fact the whole
Ambiance theme is the first default Ubuntu desktop theme I haven't felt
compelled to customize (well, except for the Terminal background!). It looks
stunning and very pleasant to use for long periods of time. Kudos.
Forgive my bluntness, but this should not be a decision based on whether or not certain people like the placement. As Mark pointed out earlier, this is not a democracy, so if /anyone's/ preference was to have any weight, it would be his alone.
What /should/ matter, however, is usability. This is a fairly big change, and regardless of whether or not I like the placement, I would really like to see some real usability test data. I'm not entirely convinced that having the buttons next to the menus is a bad thing, but nor am I convinced that it is actually a good thing. I think that if we are going to force the majority of our user-base (most of whom won't be comfortable changing it back on their own) to use this new left-handed placement, we should have a document explaining to them why this is a better decision and why they should learn to like it. Without proper usability data, such a document is impossible to write.
So I will repeat the request: can we please see the usability test data for the window manager button placement? If there isn't any, could we please have someone experienced in the field begin testing to collect this data? I would be happy to participate and try out the new placement, but I am not experienced enough to actually run the tests.
Regards,
-Scott