Re: [Ayatana] Launcher API and Firefox

[Ed Lin <edlin280@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 10:28 PM, Chris Coulson
<chrisccoulson@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 1) It's not obvious what the progress bar on the Firefox icon actually
> indicates. I know it's download progress because I wrote the extension,
> but Firefox has ways of indicating progress for many other things too -
> eg, is it indicating page load, addon install or bookmark sync progress?
>
> 2) Considering point 1, should I limit the use of the progress bar to
> just indicating download progress, or should I use it for indicating the
> progress of other tasks too?

I think a progress indicator in the launcher should be reserved for
tasks that really make sense to put there:
That is tasks that take a longer time so users might switch to another
application while something is loading in the background and secondly
the user must really be interested in when the progress finished.
page load and addon-install in your example fail at point 1, bookmark
sync fails at point 2.

Generally having more than one kind of progress indicator per launcher
icon is very difficult to implement because of the small size
available.

> 3) Because the launcher (and hence the progressbar) is hidden by
> default, I'm not sure whether I need to support additional (and legacy)
> methods for indicating progress of a task. Eg, Firefox normally opens a
> download progress window when starting a download. Ideally, I would like
> to not present that window at all when running in Unity (except for
> accessing finished downloads), and just rely on the launcher instead.
> However, with the progressbar hidden by default, I'm not sure that this
> is a good idea.

It's not hidden by default on my desktop monitor. However, the the
progress indicator is no replacement for the download manager which
gives you info about eta and speed (very important for example when
downloading from a slow mirror which the user might want to change)
and where you can pause or cancel downloads. Also the download manager
is hidden away in the menu. Users coming from other platforms might
even expect it to open automatically and know of no way to open it
manually. Therefore I'd suggest keeping the default behavior.

> 4) If I pause all my downloads, should I continue to show the
> progressbar or should I hide it? Should there be a way to indicate that
> the job has been paused? (looking at the Firefox code suggests the
> Windows launcher provides a way to indicate that a job is paused,
> although I don't have a Windows install to verify this).

Firefox on Windows changes the color of the progress bar from green to
yellow. Makes sense to me and looks better than an overlay "||"
symbol.

> 5) If I open multiple instances of Firefox, they will all try to
> indicate progress through the same launcher icon.

I think what you mean by that is "New Window". I'd handle that same
way as multiple downloads within a single window of firefox, i.e.
conflate them all into a single bar just like the titlebar text of the
Firefox download manager or the Windows taskbar indicator does.

I don't think you are referring to starting two truly independent
instances of firefox with the --no-remote flag which should put two
separate icons into the launcher. Haven't tested it if Unity does
that.

Regards,
Ed Lin