Re: [Ayatana] Place "Shut Down" as the last entry in the Sessions-Menu for Oneiric and beyond

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 6 July 2011 13:04, Omer Akram <om26er.list@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

> Good news, in Oneiric system settings will be removed from the SessionMenu
> and an icon for it will be placed in the launcher by default, It'll probably
> happen around alpha-3 I guess :-)

That is not good news at all. The launcher is being abused. It should not have
a list of mounted devices and it should not have an icon for system settings.
Mounted devices should have an indicator and system settings should have an
icon in the dash. That is to say, it should have its own lense.

With regard to mounted devices, I feel strongly that they should have their own
indicator for these reasons:

    * Users don't understand why it's important to unmount them before
unplugging
          them, but they will do so by mistake and discover that it
does no harm. By
          using an indicator, we can use a green icon when the user
unmounts them
          correctly and a red one when they don't, leading them onto
the right path.
          Poeople do want to do the right thing.
    * Placing mounted devices in the launcher makes the launcher cluttered and
          people will not be bothered to search for them in order to
unmount, for
          instance when they're in a hurry or is under stress.
    * The launcher should be for "apps". Trash, desktop and window switching are
          valid exceptions, but it must not become a slippery slope.
The launcher is
          only effective when it only does what the user does often.
If it becomes
          filled with other stuff, then it will become less inviting.

I feel that configurations should be placed in a lense with an icon in
the dash for
these reasons:

    * Configuring and using are different things. So far we've only
had Preferences
          and Administration, but this has to change. We should reach
for a way to
          configure all applications from the same place. You will not
access Firefox'
          settings from Firefox' menus, but from TCS (The Configuration Screen).
          The settings will be available from GSettings and therefore
it is no longer
          necessary for each application to provide their own,
non-uniform, config
          dialogs. They will still be available, of course, but users
of Ubuntu will not
          have to search for them. They will just press the Ubuntu
button, tap or click
          Configure and select the application they want to configure.
Unity should
          provide a unified way of accessing all common features of
all applications.
          There is no unity without unification. This is quite
obviously the right way
          to do this, so we should prepare for it as soon as possible,
even though
          some applications won't be configurable that way -- yet.