unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ted Gould <ted@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2009-09-04 at 16:45 -0400, Celeste Lyn Paul wrote:
> * If infact the message indicator is indeed an indicator and not
> turning into a dashboard, which no one has been able to answer.

I won't be able to answer that, as I have no clue what a dashboard is.
All in all I care very little about what it's called, and much more
about solving users problems :)  So sure, it's a "dashboard" works for
me. :)

> Currently this how I would expect it to work: The message indicator
> will indicate if there is a message there. If there are no messages,
> there is no indication. No reason to go to the message indicator. No
> reason to go there to launch an application. If there is a message
> there, then you go to the message indicator and it tells you what
> messages you missed. If you missed a message, want to see more about
> it, you click on the message item and it takes you to where you need
> to be. If the application is running, then you go to the app or
> whatever. If there is a message for an application *not* running,
> clicking on the message item will launch the application and load the
> message. The latter is an acceptable shortcut to an application
> because it is simply supporting the primary activity of the message
> indicator: helping users view missed messages, regardless if the
> application/service is running.
> 
> If an application has *no* messages, there should be no reference to
> that application anywhere in the message indicator, regardless if it
> is running or not. This includes shortcuts to launch applications. But
> the v2 plans for the message indicator wants to provide a shortcut to
> applications, regardless if they are running and if they have
> messages. Why do users need this? All the message indicator should do
> is support messages.

I think, that, in general we have a lot of the same goals.  I think one
of the things that you're missing in this progression is that we already
have application menu items.  For a few reasons.

The application items provide a sectioning of the menu, but also provide
information about what the sub items are.  For instance in a news feed
reader it would be more obvious that the subitems were newsgroups.  Or a
IM client would have messages from IM.  This would be hard to
communicate without the application items.

They also provide a way to hide and show the application.  This is
inherited from the notification items that we're replacing.  They have a
crazy model mode with notification of messages and showing and hiding
the applications.  But, what they do provide what John Mccann coined as
"get out of my face mode."  I'm not sure if this is a failing of
application switchers or a genuine need for users to clean their
application list, but regardless, it's an "important" feature to keep.
I haven't seen a good replacement of that functionality.

So, I think if you accept the application menu items as already there
(and useful) I think that the launchers are a natural and useful
extension of those items.

		--Ted

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