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Re: [Ayatana] "Ubuntu" Applications
True and an excellent point. I'm not saying this is for all developers. But for those who what to create that... experience for others, this will be the thing for them to go by.
As for fragmentation. There's no real-- I don't see it as an issue (personally). Because, the guidelines will primarily concern themselves with the look and feel of an app, based on good design. And good design is good design no matter what system it shows up on. (Well, not ENTIRELY accurate, but I assume you get the gist of what I mean.) So the app developers gets some good design guidelines to make his or her app better knowing they are following what would potentially be professional designer approved specs.
On top of this, it would be recommended to add Unity integration and such. But, we all know apps can exist just fine without all those bells and whistles. It's there if you have it, not in the way if you don't. (IE, Gwibber's Unity quicklist in no way interferes with running the application in GNOME Shell, or have a message counter for Thunderbird doesn't make it a worse application in other environments.
Make sense?
On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Thorsten Wilms
<t_w_@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 09/06/2011 06:59 PM, Jonathan Meek wrote:
Seek and you shall find. I'm not aiming this at you in particular, but
the kind of mentality that your statement is indicative of. We need not
base design decisions on how the community is going to react. That isn't
a valid argument for or against something. So what if some people think
it is too close to Apple? So what if some people think it's Ubuntu
throwing it's weight around.
Ubuntu has gone through the whole "oh you stole that from Apple" thing
and come out fine before. People are going to complain no matter what.
Don't worry about it. Just listen and if they say something
constructive, use it to improve. Don't stop before you've started just
because someone is going to complain.
As for a potential to widen a wedge in the community. I see no wedge. I
see some heated words and design decisions some people may not agree on,
but we carry on or step aside.
I agree, if that is what you are saying, that design decisions are often, but of course not exclusively, met with at best half-informed, poorly constructed criticism. Opinions thrown out by people who usually will not get involved beyond that point. A lot of noise best treated as such.
But when it comes to defining what an "Ubuntu App" shall be, and to creating a custom HIG, the question is:
What will developers make out of it?
Will it seem like Ubuntu is asking for extra work? May it be asking for things that would be good in the context of any other distribution, anyway? Does it further needless fragmentation? Or is it about adjustments to make one single chosen platform really shine?
Developers might prefer to think of themselves as Linux developers, not Ubuntu developers (to just skip over entirely OS-independent).
--
Thorsten Wilms
thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/