unity-design team mailing list archive

[Conscious User <conscioususer@xxxxxxx>]

> 4) Application indicators (not volume, but things like transmission, rb,
> etc). They are very different from first 3. (...) But
> 4th aim is to launch application as quick as possible.

Actually, the aim is to provide a menu of quick actions. Bringing up the
application window is simply one of them. Saying that opening the app is
the *main* aim essentially turns the notifcation/indicator area into a
glorified taskbar, which is exactly the kind of abuse we should avoid.

> But how do I
> perform this task? Is there any general way to do this? With
> notification area I could  just click the icon. But how can I do this
> with indicators? What menu point should I click?

I'm not sure what you mean by "general", but both Transmission and
Rhythmbox appindicators have an item with a clear label "open
[appplication name]". You can't get much more clear than that.

> So, what consistency you are talking about? Consistency in appearance?

It's much more than that. All appindicators are menus, and so are
the system indicators. This means that the top right corner can
have a single, unified way of interacting: opening a menu and
selecting an item.

Everything being a menu also allows mouse scrubbing, which is good
against misclicks, and easy keyboard interaction, which is good
for accessibility.

Your complaints seem to come from the fact that interacting with
the Rhythmbox and Transmission is now different from before.
However, this is far from "breaking usability consistency"
because *there was no consistency to break*, to begin with. You
would have a point if all apps who use the tray icon do so for
quick launch. This is not true. Some of them use it to bring a
menu, other use it to open a pop up with a status, etc. This is
the chaos that app indicators propose to organize.

When you bring consistency to set that that is inconsistent,
it is quite obvious that some of them will change. Otherwise
they wouldn't be inconsistent to begin with.

While I don't agree with all decisions involving indicators,
*how* they increase consistency is quite clear to me: by
turning everything into menus.