unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jim Rorie <jfrorie@xxxxxxxxx>]

I see where you are going, but I have a couple of concerns.

1) It's a given that many developers were using(abusing) the
notification area inappropriately.  However, I think you are viewing
part of this wrong.  Yes, there were a lot of indicators that weren't
notify anything. But they were shortcuts.  The NA morphed into a
shortcut area because it provided a unique level of functionality that
wasn't available anywhere else on the desktop.

A prominent example is that of the music player.  Short of having a
window open to get in your way, the NA icon gives you a way to control
the player with a minimum number of clicks and no window management
issues.  I fear that embedding a player in yet another level of
hierarchy is going reduce usability in the march to bring order to the
desktop.  

In short, what provisions have you made to provide the same short cut
functionality without introducing additional clicks?

2) I personally tweak the update notifier on all my machine (internal
and ones I build for others) to revert the old notification icon scheme.
It saves me a lot of trouble and questions, particularly with people
that are not particularly computer literate.  A lot of people do this.
It's a pretty popular mod.  

I have been silent on the update manager issue in the hopes that a sane
solution would present itself.  It hasn't.  Now you are forcing our
hand. So I submit.  What do you intend to do to resolve that fact that
the update manager pops down on the desktop like the old X-10 web ads
that we all utterly despised? :/


On Wed, 2010-04-21 at 21:44 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
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> 
> Your feedback is welcome on this mailing list (or, if you prefer, on
> either of those Web pages). Does the plan make sense? Or are we
> completely off our rocker? Is there anything we've missed? Do you have
> suggestions on how we can make the transition smoother?
> 
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