unity-design team mailing list archive

[Vishnoo <drkvi-a@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2010-04-22 at 08:49 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> On 22/04/10 04:27, Robin Anderson wrote:
> > One important point I hope the design team is aware of and that gets
> > into discussions on this topic is that minimizing to the "notification
> > area" / "(not) system tray" is currently a very nice place to put
> > applications so they're accessible from all workspaces / virtual
> > desktops even if they aren't necessarily long-running. Ubuntu, for at
> > least the past several releases, has only had two workspaces on by
> > default so I take it there isn't much of a focus to get average users
> > (read: users that don't change default settings) to use them, but they
> > are quite useful and I'd go so far as to compare them to how a person
> > feels after using a dual monitor setup for a little while compared to
> > always using a single monitor.
> 
> It's a good point. The workspaces experience has languished, and I'd
> like for us to climb in and improve it substantially. At the moment, we
> do a half-hearted job - we ship what's there but as you say, only
> configure two workspaces.

For 10.04 , we now ship with 4 workspaces as the default.

>  I'd be inclined to say "ship without
> workspaces" so that we are at least definitive about the position for
> the moment.
> 

Oh workspaces are one of the better ways to actually manage /not/
minimizing a long-running-app to systray, err, notification area ;-)

IMO , workspaces are one of the untapped resources , we havent been able
to use workspaces to the full potential [yet].

What can be done is have Task-based workspaces, similar to the grouping
the apps in the messaging menu , we could have the messaging apps stay
in only one workspace. To probably do this well, we'd need to get a good
set of personas.

Cleaning up the notification area is an interesting task , but more
importantly : 
Why are the users sending apps to the notification area? 
How are people using the tiny icon in their workflow?
Is removing it going to improve their worflow?

Would it be wise to open a wiki page and have a list of applications
that use the notification area? [if we narrow it down , we would
probably we stuck with 10-20 apps which need a good alternative..]
And Work out each application's use of the area and then work out the
best way to handle them?
I dont think we are doing it right by just saying "nothing stays there"
and trying to find a one stop solution for all.

-- 
Cheers,
Vish