Re: [Ayatana] More information in indicator menus

[Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Matt Richardson
<m.richardson.1990@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Recently Ian Santopietro made some mockups for how Unity might look on a
> phone or a desktop.
> I love the way his phone indicators look and the amount of information they
> show and I think we should migrate them to the desktop. I have done a mockup
> below to show how they would display:
>
> Mockup
>
> Clicking an indicator would show the menu as now.
> Clicking a message would load the appropriate window (email, chat etc).
> Clicking the Email/Chat/Broadcast icons would load the appropriate program.
> Hovering over the Email/Chat/Broadcast icons for 0.3 seconds, see later)
> would display the extra options currently available in the menu (i.e.
> Hovering over the Email button would display options for 'Compose new
> message' and 'Contacts').
> The 0.3 second delay on hovering is simply to prevent accidental switching
> between categories when moving the mouse to select an option under the
> current category (e.g. The user tries to change their status to 'Busy', but
> as they move their mouse down, they pass over the Broadcast icon and the
> menu changes)
> If the person you are chatting with has a profile picture, this would be
> displayed instead of the blank avatar in the menu or the chat symbol in the
> notification area.
> Other menu options would behave as now (change status, open chat window with
> selected content)
>
> Any thoughts/issues?
> Matt

1) I absolutely *love* the style.
2) Why the hovering to change tabs. Why not make them regularly
clickable like normal tabs?
3) On second thought, why the tabs at all? They're not intuitively
distinguishable with icons (I assume the envelope is Thunderbird, but
really all of them are envelope-related, thus their presence in the
menu in the first place), and there doesn't look like enough space for
text labels.
4) I absolutely *love* the style :)

This looks like a massive improvement over the current situation
(which is still pretty good to be honest). I have some quibbles with a
few pieces of it, but this is definitely a direction that needs
exploring further.

Thank you for putting this together.

Evan