unity-design team mailing list archive

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gaëtan,


The plan is to kill off the idea that an indicator "owns" a window. At
some point soon, people shouldn't need or want to think about showing
& hiding open windows from an indicator; the point is strictly to
control them and get quick feedback. not everything has been moved to
this new system, but will be in the future.

I believe "decreases usability" is a strange thing to say. Granted,
this applet means people may have a few more steps to perform for
certain functions that used to be notification applets' primary
functions. However, the number of clicks to access a functioh is not
an appropriate metric for usability. If it is, we should abandon the
Applications menu and link the desktop to /usr/share/applications ;)

The idea is consistency! If the primary interaction for every
indicator is unpredictable, the system is less useful as a whole.
Remember that a lot of users don't right click, either. Having a menu
open on a left click (for many users, the only click!) opens up a lot
of possibilities. People can feel more comfortable clicking in the
indicator area and using things, knowing that every operation is
LABELED. Nothing will happen that they don't expect.


Dylan