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

[Peterson Silva <peterson.235@xxxxxxxxx>]

Recently I've posted this bug at Launchpad:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/686822

So the thing is, if you have only one instance of an active window and you click its icon in the Launcher, the effect is useless. Users coming from Windows 7 (or any other version of it for that matter) or Mac OS will expect the application to minimize; instead, it will just float. It is useless and counter-intuitive already.

On the other hand, when there are multiple windows of the same app, the effect is very cool and useful; clearly, applying the same effect to different scenarios of opened programs isn't an optimal solution. Neither is having three different behaviours for different scenarios (like I suggested at launchpad). The problem with my original suggestion is that the behaviour would end up depending on something the user can't see, making the experience unpredictable, unreliable, ultimately confusing, as Shuttleworth pointed out.

So here's what we could do, then: to have different effects based on the windows opened, but with a visual hint so the user knows what to expect (and can easily understand the point of the behaviour). I'm not currently using Unity, but as far as I remember, there's no visual hint as to whether or not there are multiple instances of a window opened. We could put a small emblem over the program icon in the launcher (like in one of its corners) with a number indicating the number of windows.

When user clicks an icon with a number on it --- choose windows. When user clicks an icon with no number on it --- minimize.

What do you think?

Peterson

http://petercast.net