unity-design team mailing list archive

[Martin Albisetti <martin.albisetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/04/2009 11:35 AM, mac_v wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 13:40 +0000, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> > Abhishek Dasgupta wrote:
> > > 2009/12/3 Eduard Grebe<eduardgrebe@xxxxxxxxx>:
> > >
> > > > On small-screen devices like netbooks the shorter username is preferable.
> > >
> > > The best thing would be to have a gconf key or a preference to switch
> > > between full name, short username and no name at all (I don't need to
> > > see my login username always at the corner!)
> > >
> > > Abhishek
>
> +1
>
> Though the user name is meaningful when there is a multi-user set-up or
> classroom setup as mentioned in the first post , it does not provide any
> useful information for a single user setup and it is a waste of pixels.
>
> Either the name need not be displayed for single user systems by
> default.

A gconf key may solve the problem for us, but it won't solve it for users in 
general.
Why not just allow setting a "display name" in the "About me" app?
Select something by default, and let people change it if they feel like being 
addressed in a different way. We probably use the name in more than just the 
indicator applet, so this could apply globally.


> Or , we could use the space for something more meaningful to the user it
> would make sense.
>
> We could have a "mood reader" instead of the name.
> The session-menu can be made to detect the activity the user is doing
> and alter the "mood status" of the user in the menu.

Wouldn't it seem odd that something so persistent (the panel) changed so much?

--
Martin