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Re: [Ayatana] Unity thoughts

Just to cover a few of your points:

On 23/11/11 05:16, Blair Harris wrote:

The Dash Board



The Home Lens

The home lens on the dash board is almost useless, there is no practical usability in the eight large buttons due to FireFox, ThunderBird and Banshee already present in the launcher. My recommendation for an improved Unity design is for the home lens to be made for modular panels that adds much more meaning and a modern look to the home screen. These modular panels are like graphical widgets for example:
    • FaceBook\Twitter
    • Open applications and tabs in FireFox or Chrome
    • Time\Calendar
    • Weather
    • CPU Monitor
    • Network Monitor
    • Memory Monitor
    • Slide-show
    • RSS reader
    • Computer Information
    • System Messages (Updates, Missing Drivers etc)
    • Stocks
    • Notes

This has been discussed quite a few times with lots of ideas floating around. I like your idea for making it modular however, as this allows people to customise it the way they like.



People with programing knowledge should be able to create custom panels  and share them with everyone via the Ubuntu Software Centre which will also help get the community involved.



This, as far as I am aware, is something that is planned for the future in terms of lenses, but I like the idea of extending it to panels for the home screen.





The Application Lens

Lets start by having a look at the current application screen, the screen is split up into the sections that are:
  • Frequently used
  • Installed
  • Apps to download


Each of these section to me are near useless due :
  • I don’t know about you but the programs in my frequently used sections are already on the launcher. Every time i go to the application lens is to open an application that I infrequently use which funny enough are never in the frequently used section.
  • The installed section shows the following items on my machine:
    • Installed Drivers
    • Some card game
    • Appearance
    • Archive Manager
    • Backup
    • Banshee

Apart from Banshee these are possibly the worst applications to show because they are barley ever used. But even if you did show very commonly used applications then you have the same problem as the most frequently used section.

  • The download sections show nothing useful to download, people either know which programs they want to install or people including me don’t even know what this applications are even designed for that have been suggested.

Good points.



To find an application that is not on my launcher (which also means not in the frequently used section) i must perform the following steps:
  • Open the dash board
  • Click the applications lens
  • Click the filter results button
  • Click the category of the application  (because scrolling through 110 applications is not fun)
  • Click the button to expand he installed section (in my experience over half the time i need to expand)
  • Open the application



The much quicker way to do this is open the dash, type the first few letters of the application, hit enter or click the icon.




This takes a total of 6 steps compared to GNOME 2 that does this task in the 3 steps. Creating a new user interface should not re-invent the wheel, instead a new user interface should learn from its predecessor and improve aspects where appropriate. Unity should be an improved version of GNOME 2 not an entire new user interface that will takes years to produce a solid product. Personally this application screen is a complete disaster and is something I would not expect Ubuntu to produce. (adopt KISS - Keep It Simple & Stupid)

The best feature of GNOME 2 that I liked was how it categorized applications (Office, Multimedia and Development for example). A simple list of the categories on the left with relating programs in the centre is simpler, more effective and quicker then the current setup. To open the application a user double clicks the icon and it opens, if the user clicks on it once then a side panel on the right appears that contain the following:
  • A description about the program
  • A preview picture of of the program
  • A button to open the program
  • A button to un-install the program
  • A button to link the program in the launcher
  • A button to change the category of the program
  • A button to update the program if can
  • A button to change the icon


I don't think the description or preview picture are necessary here as if the user wants to know about the application, they could open it.
The button to open the program is unnecessary and may confuse new users who believe that this is how a program is opened.
The button to put the application in the launcher is unnecessary as this can be achieved via drag and drop.
The button to update the application is unnecessary as this is covered by the update manager.

This leaves us with 3 possible actions to make available: Uninstall, Change category, Change icon.
I think that for this purpose, Uninstall and change icon could be a right click menu, whilst change category could be achieved via drag and drop over the category desired.


From this new layout design the steps to open an application are:
  • Open the launcher
  • Click the applications screen
  • Click  the category
  • Select the program


Four steps is an improvement on the current Unity’s six steps, although if the users sets  the default lens to application there is only three steps equalling GNOME 2. When the user has yet too select the category the most frequently used programs can be shown in the centre by default.  


I do agree that the current layout is not particularly useful and this would make it easier to open applications with the mouse.

The File Lens

The files screen should just be a light weight file browser including the following functionality:
  • Browse through folders
  • Create and delete files and folders
  • Copy, cut and paste folders and files
  • Rename files and folders
  • Open files
  • Search for files and folders
  • Contain a side panel for quickly viewing images and pdf’s



I like this but I'm not sure how easy it is to implement whilst keeping it lightweight and fast. I would also add a button to 'Switch to full mode' which would open the current folder in Nautilus

Another Lens

The dash board provides a quick and convenient method for accessing and viewing program and files. Although as modern systems evolve average users are required to alter the settings of their computer more than ever. This why there should be a lens for basic computer settings for the user to conveniently edit via the dash board. Such settings could be:
  • Wireless & Networks
  • Sound
  • Display & Appearance
  • Date & Time
  • Keyboard
  • Language
  • Printers
  • User Account
  • Battery


The design layout should closely follow the applications lens because consistency is always good. On the left has a list of the grouped settings as listed above with the centre section containing all the settings a user may edit.


This has been discussed before and I think the general consensus was that settings should remain in the 'System Settings' window.

Other Notes

Other ideas that can enhance the dash board could be:
  • Search more places such as
    • The Internet (Wikipedia for example)

These would have to be strictly opt-in to prevent unwanted internet access. I also think that new lenses are the place for this.

    • Improved Ubuntu Software Centre searches

I would be interested to hear your ideas on how you would improve this. For example, I would like to see searching by file extension or a short description of the program. Again I wonder if the place for this is another lens, or whether we are in danger of replacing all of our applications with lenses and should accept that some things are just better done with their intended application (Ubuntu Software Centre in this case)

    • Cloud services such as (Ubuntu One, Google Docs, Dropbox for example)

Again these would have to be opt-in but in principle I like the idea of adding his functionality to the file lens

    • Mail from ThunderBird

I'm not entirely sure of the use of this. Perhaps you could cite some use cases?

    • Bookmarks from FireFox and Chrome

Love this idea!

    • Notes from TomBoy (or another note taking program)
    • Friends from social networking sites

Potentially different lenses for these

  • The launcher opens in the same state as it was closed

It already does this for me. Not sure why it doesn't for you.

  • The user can select which screen shows when the launcher opens


That would be nice.



The Launcher


The launcher is in a similar situation with the dash board, good idea but has a couple of design flaws. However the launcher isn't as bad as the dash board, to be precise there are only two aspects of the launcher that really need an improvement in my opinion. The first one is when the user hovers the mouse over the icon a menu should appear to the side with the following items (just like when you right click on the icon):
  • Open new instance of the program
  • View all instances
  • Close all instances
  • Remove from the launcher
  • Change icon


I don't see the need to change this to being hover instead of right click.
Open a new instance can be achieved by middle click, but I think a first time tour could help with the discoverability of this function and I think that it wouldn't hurt to add it to the quicklist.
View all instances is currently achieved by double click.
Close all instances exists in the current quicklist (Quit)
Remove from launcher can be achieved either by drag and drop to the trash or by unchecking 'Keep in Launcher' from the quicklist.
Change icon would be a nice addition but could be added to the current quicklist.


The purpose behind this was that I first found it hard to open multiple instances of an application. As you know once an application is open clicking the icon again will only focus back on to that application. To open a new one I had to do so via the dash board but the point of the launcher is to quickly open applications. Personally i found this rather annoying and asking my self what is the point of the launcher if it cant do its job completely. This improvement will help eliminate any confusion that users may experience while using Unity to manage their open programs.

The second one is that the launcher is not workspace specific as of Ubuntu 11.10, for example
  • I have no programs open at all and then I open FireFox on workspace 1
  • I then switch to workspace 2 and click the FireFox icon in the launcher
  • What I am expecting is another FireFox window in workspace 2 to open because workspace 1 should not affect workspace 2. This is the fundamental purpose of workspaces, that one can have many desktops running without them conflicting with each other, however when i click the icon on the launcher I am taking back to workspace 1.


I actually like the ability to switch workspaces by clicking the icon of the application I want but that's just me. It would be interesting to do a poll to find out which behaviour people prefer and find more intuitive.


This is almost defeating the propose of having multiple workspaces and or making it harder to manage their application across multiple workspaces. The Ubuntu community have long loved the feature of multiple workspaces so the last thing you wont to do is take it away from them.






Other Notes

Other ideas that can enhance the launcher could be:
  • Choosing where the launcher is positioned on the screen

Discussed many times and I think it is planned for the future

  • Rather than having little arrows indicating how many instances are open display a number in a little box in the corner

Good idea. Not sure what you would do about programs that currently display badges for other items (e.g. Thunderbird new emails)

  • Have the option of dragging some icons onto the desktop instead of keeping them on the launcher

This can be done from the dash to the desktop

  • Dragging icons up and down the launcher to rearrange the order of appearance

You can already do this

  • Shortcut to files, folders and web-pages etc

Would love to see implemented.

  • Folders that when clicked show another group of icons

There have been a few ideas around this.

  • Have an icon to show the desktop



Again, this has been suggested a few times. I'm not sure why we don't have it, though this is available from the alt+tab switcher. Perhaps it would be better to assign the bottom right hand corner to this function (particularly useful for windows 7 users) rather than taking up extra space on the launcher.









 


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