unity-design team mailing list archive

[Tyler Brainerd <tylerbrainerd@xxxxxxxxx>]

I would love nothing more then for all the mockups and design specifications
from the last year and a half were fully implemented, instead of covered up
by newer ideas.

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 3:07 AM, Conscious User <conscioususer@xxxxxxx>wrote:

>
> Hey all,
>
> I want to finally write something I've meant to write for a long time.
>
> First off, here is some context, in the form of recent events:
>
> Sense Hofstede mentions that NotifyOSD has barely been touched in
> the latest Ubuntu iterations:
> http://twitter.com/qense/status/14779713532
>
> Matthew Paul Thomas expresses dissatisfaction with the current
> shape of NotifyOSD:
> https://twitter.com/mpt/statuses/15525108146
> https://twitter.com/mpt/statuses/15564045224
> https://twitter.com/conscioususer/statuses/15564426984
> https://twitter.com/mpt/statuses/15584217252
>
> Benjamin Humphrey posts a long essay about the current unpolished
> elements in Ubuntu. I don't agree with the entire post, but I
> do agree with its essence:
>
> http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/many-hands-make-light-work-few-make-it.html
>
> David Siegel, in a comment to this posts, explicitly says:
> "A good first step would be to decide not to ship features if
> they're not finished yet!"
>
> It seems that ever since Ayatana started giving fruit, new ideas
> have been proposed and started faster than old ideas are being
> polished enough. Perhaps "polished" is not even the word, is
> at implies improvement over something already complete. And
> some things are not yet complete.
>
> For example, NotifyOSD, which IIRC was the first ever Ayatana
> implementation to land, is still not fully following its
> specification. For example, the morphing windows/alerts do
> not exist yet, and they would be helpful in improving the
> current update-manager behavior (one of the hottest bugs ever).
> Dynamic timeouts based on text length do not exist yet, as well.
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/+bug/332945
>
> Another example is the Me Menu, which created a lot of confusion
> with respect to what the text field was supposed to do, confusion
> that might not exist that the specification, which included
> microblogging icons, was being fully followed.
>
> I don't think that there is a single Ayatana project which
> already reached a stated we can call close to "finished".
>
> To make things worse, the user is expected to figure out those
> incomplete implementations by himself. The Manual Project was
> an improvement in this regard, but that still doesn't change
> the fact that the new user is being faced with incomplete
> implementations that might be very intuitive in the future
> but currently are not.
>
> When I suggested some kind of "getting started" tutorial, to
> complement the install slideshow, I was shot down in this list
> (twice) with the argument that "it's better if the features
> are intuitive and speak for themselves". Well, while the
> implementation is incomplete, that won't happen. What
> should be done meanwhile?
>
> Meanwhile, Maverick is proposing Window Indicators, which will
> require a lot of technical work and upstream collaboration.
> And probably will take a lot of time from the few people who
> are responsible for the majority of NotifyOSD/indicator
> coding. Time that, perhaps, could be better spent in fulfilling
> popular requests.
>
> My question is: isn't it time to put some brakes on the
> enthusiasm and start prioritizing polishing instead of new
> features? The current approach is not scalable, and this is
> starting to show...
>
>
>
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