On 08/07/2010 09:56 AM, Remco wrote:
On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 15:46, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:In this scenario someone is using (for example) Calculator, Banshee, Empathy, Gmail, Amazon, CNN, Farmville, the Gundam AnimeSuki Forum, and Hulu respectively. That they are using Firefox for 70% of these things does not mean it is useful or informative for "Firefox" to appear in the corner of the screen while doing them -- just as, for example, "Gnome" or "Xorg" or "Ubuntu" or "GNU" or "Linux" shouldn't. Taking up that much screen space with any of those brands may well be good for their vendors, but it is not relevant to user goals.Oh, but you're not directly using Gmail, or Amazon, or CNN, or Farmville, or any of those sites. You're using a browser to view them. This browser has a URL bar, a back button, bookmarks, history, extensions, tabs. You can pretend that a web page is a normal application (with Prism and those kinds of things), but that's a whole other thing. If you're using a browser, then the application menu which will allow you to manipulate that browser is a useful feature. Now, if you create a Prism app from a web page, then it would make sense that the web page itself fills that menu. This is something that Prism developers would have to figure out though. +1. People know that they open "that internet thingy" to get to web pages. They know that it isn't just for one website and they know that it lets them go to multiple ones. Same for office-style applications. They know that Word and Excel are different programs for different things, but they know that they are all in the same general "MS Office" category. If people understand that just fine, then it's no different from OpenOffice.org. +1. I don't use "E-mail Client", I use Thunderbird. I don't use "Web Browser", I use Firefox or Opera or Chromium or Epiphany or whatever. It makes it easier for people to be sure what application the window belongs to when it isn't so easy to tell. It's easy for you to distinguish between the windows because you're used to them and the layout. New users or inexperienced users, not so much.You're assuming the point. Why should I care that it's a "Thunderbird" window? That matters only if I often use multiple e-mail clients and need to distinguish between them.Or if you use Thunderbird instead of the default email client in Ubuntu. Brands exist to reduce confusion. They allow people to talk about the software they are using. |