unity-design team mailing list archive

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 8:19 PM, David Balch <david@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I really like that the power icon goes red when a restart is required
> - good job!
>
> A further refinement would be to make the "Restart required..." text
> in the menu red as well, to tie the meaning of the icon colour to the
> menu action...
>
> Cheers,
> Dave.
>
> --
> http://www.witchesband.com/


I was wanting to discuss this as well. Right now we have this
beautifully consistent way of saying an indicator wants attention.
However, once you open a lit up indicator, it is not apparent why it
is lit up. For example, when the volume applet turns red while muted
(an excellent little touch!), it isn't actually clear why it is red.
One can click it and sees the same information he always sees. If he
has explicitly asked to play sound it'll make sense, but otherwise not
so much. The thing that immediately occurs to me (but could be a
terrible idea) is to have a note at the top of the menu, or some kind
of tooltip (of a magic new variety that appears below the widget as
soon as one puts the mouse over it or selects it) saying
"[application_name] is trying to play sound".

For 10.10, I think it would be worth exploring a standard way for the
indicators to say what that urgent bit of news is.
It would be nice if a solution to that problem could be consistent
with the message indicator (which currently does not highlight new
messages in a particularly obvious fashion). Another thing to ponder,
consistency-wise, is the Me menu where we have a selected radio button
icon for the current status (which directly relates to the indicator's
icon), and the Rhythmbox status indicator which, when music is
playing, says what is playing via a disabled menu item at the top of
its menu.


Bye!
Dylan