I fully agree with GonzO .
Basically, Unity attempts to introduce eye candy at the expense of
cutting down useful features .
<sarcasm mode on>
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 01:13, James Jenner <james.g.jenner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> There is a valid usability based reason to remove data that the average user
> has no use of IMHO. I have no problem with that approach and from a purely
> usability point of view it makes sense to me. It's like companies that used
> to have their thumb in so many pies as a part of their business. If your a
> manufacturer you may have warehouses, trucks to ship goods, etc, etc. A lot
> of businesses found that it's easier to focus on the core business if
> they're not distracted by all this other stuff that really has nothing to do
> with what they excel in, namely manufacturing widget X. So they outsourced
> their warehouses, distribution lines, Help Desks, service centres, etc. What
> I'm trying to draw an analogy with is that generally the average user is
> focused on one task at a time. They wish to surf the net, which involves
> clicking on links, maybe typing in a url (though I find a lot of users who
> use google to find the site they wish to go for). Some will use bookmarks.
> But generally they don't care about what other applications are running,
> they don't care about the status of their printer, the current time, how
> much disk space they have left, if blue tooth is enabled, what programs they
> can launch, what the weather is in the local city, etc. All they care about
> is reading lolcats or chatting to friends on facebook, etc. This is purely
> from my own observations.
Following this kind of logic , ubuntu should install exactly 3
applications : a browser, an instant messenger and a media player.
Any user who needs more than that is a "power user" therefore it
makes no sense to clutter the default Ubuntu installation with some
specific needs ....
And, you know what ? it makes no sense to waste resources with managing
the Ubuntu repositories! The "power" users are supposed to be skilled enough
to compile from sources any application they need.
Afterall, not everyone uses Gimp or LibreOffice.
Also, DVD burning software is a total waste of space that would only confuse
the "average user" :
- tablets don't have dvd writers .
- the average user only browses the internet and socializes online
So ... who needs to burn DVDs after all ? The future is cloud storage , so
everything else should be deprecated !
<sarcasm mode off>
I deffinitely agree that "the OS should be to allow the user to do
> In essence I'm trying to say that IMO the job of the OS should be to allow
> the user to do what they want, it shouldn't get in the way and clutter their
> screens.
what they want" .
In my case , I want to be able to configure it so that I can see all the .
The current incarnation of Unity tries to enforce a simplified environment
where the ui designer decides what is useful/appropriate for the user to see
on screen. It has zero configurability compared to gnome2 or xfce4 or kde.
There would be no complicated debate about "global menus auto-hiding" if
the users were able to configure that !
Wow + omg + lol : "business users who need to switch between applications" .
> If they want to watch youtube, look at facebook, check their gmail
> account, etc, then the whole focus of the UI should be on what they're
> trying to achieve. And when they wish to do something else, then let them
> see the extra options they need for that activity. But when 80 or 90 percent
> of the time is spent looking at the contents in a window, there is no point
> cluttering up the landscape with irrelevant information.
>
> Of course there are power users, or business users who need to switch
> between applications, etc.
Switching applications is something that everyone does, not just
"power" users ...
There are indeed some users who spend 100% of their time in a browser.
But it doesn't mean that the users who don't do that are some kind of "faulty
users" who have to be converted to a limiting working environment .
Perhaps the Unity developers+designers should organize some polls so
> But I think the push to show information about
> the system, current running applications and launchers for new applications
> only caters for a small percentage of the time spent by a user on a
> computer.
> I would suggest that people are serious about improving Unity then we need
> to be developing proper use cases to document the different work methods
> people utilise. This would go hand in hand with identifying the type of
> users, what percentage of the marketplace they make up, which direction is
> Ubuntu going and what users they wish to target. To me it seems that a lot
> of the arguments are subjective, some based on an emotional reaction. Some
> proper use case documentation, analysis of the user base, determining what
> use cases are used and how frequently they're used based on time spent in
> front of the UI would help provide some objective information on this whole
> UI issue.
>
> Btw, I'm not ranting, I'm just trying to look at this objectively and assess
> if the complaints made are valid. If the figures come back that people need
> to know what application is running 80% of the time they use a computer then
> I would be the first to say lets make it permanently visible.
that users can vote and express their preferences. The current design
direction
is towards tablets and users who do nothing but browsing.
The inability to see the running applications is something that I
deeply I dislike in Unity.
There are two distinct use cases :
- starting an application ( from a menu or quick launcher or desktop icon )
- look at what's running and switch to a particular application
>From my point of view the removal of a "Windows list" is a horrible
idea that distupts
my workflow:
- i frequently open applications that are not in the quicklaunch / launcher
- i frequently switch applications by clicking on them in the "window list"
- i frequently have multiple Temrinals open , and i use the "window
list" to switch them
- in a quicklauncher I want that the icons stay the same all the time
: those are my
frequent apps and i don't want that they get mixed with some
extra apps that
happen to be running at a moment
- when looking at the open applications i want to see exactly what's running ,
without being forced to analyze the status of each icon in order to see which
- I really don't want that my linux desktop mimics macOS or windows. I
don't have a Mac. And in win7 the first thing i did was to re-enable
the quicklaunch and the classic theme.
Unity has some time until Ubuntu 11.11 to implement decent configurability.