unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jeremy Nickurak <jeremy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

So, what is the indication that "the thing is not running"? It took me
months to find out that, just because Evolution showed up in the messaging
menu, it didn't mean that part of evolution was running and checking for new
messages. That I had to open the evolution UI in addition to it being in the
messaging menu was very non-intuitive.

On Wed, Sept 4, 2009 at 19:39, Mark Shuttleworth <
mark.shuttleworth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mark.shuttleworth@DOMAIN.HIDDEN>> wrote:

> Stuart Langridge wrote:
>
> Am I missing something here? If Pidgin's not running then by definition
> I can't have any messages in it. Is the messaging menu just another
> applications menu but only containing apps which are capable of
>
> generating messages? That seems not all that useful to me, unless I've
> completely misunderstood the purpose of it.
>
>  I'll go out on a limb and say that's because y ou are one of the special
> and wonderful breed of people who know what's running on your computer. You
> may even, like me, have your favourite ps incantation to reassure you on
> the subject.
>
> The idea the messaging-menu-launching capability is built on is that users
> tend to go there to see if they have messages first, and if they don't see
> anything, they don't know if it's because "the thing is not running".
> Switching and launching are a blurred experience for many people.
>
> So, while I well agree with the risks of having multiple places to achieve
> something ("launch Quassel") I think this is worth exploring. We need to
> look closely at the phrasing of "launch Quassel" in the menu, to get to the
> heart of the matter ("Get onto IRC"), especially with the *other* work
> ongoing to bring online services under a common experiential umbrella. But
> it's worth trying this, cautiously and tastefully, now.
>
>  PS. I think this, on re-reading, might be just my restating of Celeste's
> issue :-)
>
>  No, I interpreted Celeste's concern to be about the "forced and unbending"
> nature of the exposure in the menu, which I believe should be addressed.
>
> Mark
>