unity-design team mailing list archive

[Benjamin Humphrey <humphreybc@xxxxxxxxx>]

I was going to post this as a comment on Mark's blog post but it's giving me
a 404 when I hit submit. Sorry if I have repeated some things that have
already been answered.

Mark,

Interesting idea and I'll reserve final judgement till I see it in action,
or some clearer definitions of what would go into the windicator space. I
have a few thinking points, however:

- Would having the windicators in the window border reduce the grab space
for moving windows around?

- Would removing the status bar get rid of the grab handle for resizing
windows?

- How are you going to have this work with upstream Gnome? Will application
developers have to create two versions of their application, one for Ubuntu
and the other for all other distros that use Gnome?

- What will happen with Gnome Shell?

- A lot of functionality that you've given as examples is present *in* the
applications already. For example, the volume control. Most applications
that create sound (except browsers) already have a volume control
(Rhythmbox, VLC, Totem, Banshee). If we have this existing control + the
windicator control + the panel volume icon, we'd end up with three potential
ways for a user to simply change their volume.

I understand the need to improve consistency across the board, but
duplicating functionality that's already common knowledge and fairly obvious
isn't the best way to go about it. It would make more sense to be able to
control the volume of multiple apps from the panel volume icon. I think we
should be centralizing more, not breaking things up. Gnome is filled with
icons already, I don't think adding more is a solution.

- Also, why did you move the buttons to the left in an LTS, when there is
nothing to replace them? Would it not have been better to wait until you had
something to replace the space on the right, before moving the buttons?

If you didn't have this idea a few weeks ago, then perhaps it would have
been wiser to wait a bit to move the buttons so you could actually give some
reasoning. I'm sure if you did this, the backlash from the community
wouldn't have been nearly so great.

As someone commented on the OMG! Ubuntu! article about this: "Almost as sane
as a car manufacturer who decides to move the gas pedal to the left and
install an additional pedal on the right for tuning the radio."

See you in Brussels next week :)

Benjamin


On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 7:16 AM, David Hamm <davidthamm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> feel free to make up your mind. - my brain is in quantum flux.
> rules, like having icons for everything, ex. nautilus
> usability, like only having a home button on an iphone.
> Sorry for destroying the thread! :D I will try to proceed more quietly.
>
> btw. can't wait for ff4, it couldn't come soon enough.
>
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-- 
Benjamin Humphrey

Ubuntu Manual Team Lead
Dunedin, New Zealand

http://www.ubuntu-manual.org
www.interesting.co.nz