unity-design team mailing list archive

[Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 27/05/10 21:51, Scott E. Armitage wrote:
> I like them in general, but I have some reservations.
>
>    1. They still seem pretty big (i.e. not very "tight", as Mark put
>       it). I already find many of the controls on those screenshots to
>       be quite large, and everything starts adding up to eat up our
>       screen space.
>

+1. The Hint Bar (as MPT has started calling it in the draft spec for
Windicators) should be as tight as possible.

>    1. Do we need them to be shaded? Status bars will be displaying on
>       screens that are relatively busy already; Chrome's status bar
>       overlays are a solid colour with no frills.
>

No, we explicitly do not want them shaded. They are PART OF the app, not
an overlay like Notify-OSD.


>    1. Do we need the icon? What purpose does it serve? Is there some
>       other way we can provide this functionality without adding them
>       to the status bars?
>

I think apps should be free to put icons in the hint bar if they want,
but the guidance should be not to use that unless a very strong case for
it can be made, as it will be highly transient.


>    1. Could we see some mockups with the status bar displaying outside
>       the window border? I have run into this situation in Chrome on
>       OS X and Windows before under certain circumstances, and frankly
>       I prefer it to in-window overlays. Of course if the window is
>       near or at the bottom of the screen, we would move the overlay
>       up into the window as required.
>

Interesting idea. Hard to achieve without window-manager support,
though, and I think this is something I'd prefer to keep tight to the
window itself.

Mark

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