unity-design team mailing list archive

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

> I think this is where the greatest potential for saving systray space comes 
> from.  I'm working on a blog post on this (since it's hard to point at 
> pictures on a mailing list).  When I looked through the stuff on my systray 
> and thought, "what do I really not want there/wouldn't mind if it were one 
> level of indirection away" and it was all system related.
> 
> Scott K

That's exactly what I was thinking a while ago, too. Something like the
system tray does make a lot of sense for presenting long-term
notifications within a single level of individual icons, where each icon
is a notification. Could use an infrastructure touch-up (get on d`
bus!), but it's adequate for UI and I can see why people use it.

Instead of Message Indicator, Ubuntu should be pushing a Hardware
Indicator where people control / monitor the different hardware devices
attached to their computer. Bluetooth, sound and networking go there.
This could really improve how the user interacts with new hardware,
since he could immediately expect any newly attached hardware to trigger
some feedback in that one place. It's like the window from the
abstracted world of software into the actual physical part of the
computer. For example, an attached USB flash drive could get an entry in
the Hardware Indicator, or a new printer :)

It could be further blinged out by the fact that such a design opens up
a ton of space for quick hardware stuff - a resource we have always
needed, since today's hardware icons in the notification area convey
very little actual information on their own. For example, when bluetooth
headsets finally start cooperating (judging by Fedora 11, that will be
happening for 9.10 unless someone falls asleep for the year), a separate
volume control could appear for that additional audio device, below the
master volume slider inside the hardware indicator. (I /think/ it's
possible to have sliders in menus, with some tinkering). That way the
user immediately knows that, yes, that bluetooth headset is connected
and can be adjusted.

Personally, I'm playing with ubiquity-slideshow and school, and have
vowed not to lose sight of either, but I think something like that would
be awesomely worthwhile to prototype.

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