On 16 June 2010 12:28, Conscious User
<conscioususer@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Well, any closed but not replaceable application that can't or won't
> adapt, as well as any open application that has yet to be fixed. The
> latter should hopefully disappear over time (but how much time?), the
> former also goes into the "never will "category for the purpose of
> this discussion at least. Some software in use may not even have
> developers or even code any more.
> I think the way forward is to fix all apps that are possible, via bug
> reports and patches, and replace the rest with good alternatives over
> time.
> I don't think the way forward is to sabotage a user experience because
> they need (or even want to) use applications which can not yet be
> replaced, or at least yet have to receive a patch.
>
> I think that easy ways to conform and pointing out the benefit of
> belonging should be enough "pressure" to adapt without actively
> breaking applications, and probably just about as fast.
"Breaking" is too strong of a word. Putting Wine/Java icons in a
separate window or indicator menu would make them suboptimal,
sure, but still fully functional.
So the question is: can Wine/Java apps be considered cornercase-y
enough for this sub-optimality to be accepted?
Well, I don't think that's the question at all. We already have a near-optimal solution to this in sticking the old-style notification area alongside the new indicator applet. An optimal one would be some kind of indicator that gave good UX and integrated nicely with the indicator applet.
The question is more, "how can we fix this to provide the best user experience?", rather than than "how many people will be affected by us implementing a bad user experience (moving to a window)?" We should be trying to improve the situation, not make it worse for the people that do use Wine and Java apps.
Luke.
P.S. Scott has the stats somewhere, a very large portion of Ubuntu users use Wine, add on Java users to that and we are talking a substantial portion of our userbase. Granted they won't all be running apps that create tray icons though but that's almost impossible to quantify.