unity-design team mailing list archive

[Kristoffer Lundén <kristoffer.lunden@xxxxxxxxx>]

2010/6/16 Conscious User <conscioususer@xxxxxxx>

> "Breaking" is too strong of a word. Putting Wine/Java icons in a
> separate window or indicator menu would make them suboptimal,
> sure, but still fully functional.
>
>
It's the exact right word, since I wasn't talking about functionality. Rocks
are functional, but have a broken experience when it comes to building
houses, especially if you are used to a hammer. It may not be breaking
functionality (actually for icons that indicate status, it does that too
since it will be hidden) but it DOES break experience. Regressing to a
window in particular would be a horrible experience and totally
unacceptable. Cramming it into some kind of drop-down indicator not much
better, since a lot of apps communicate via these old indicators.

You do realize that moving these indicators to windows or menu in no way
unbreaks them, or makes them conform - they will stick out just as sorely,
or worse. Sticking them in a menu does not make them behave like the rest of
the desktop, so that effort is not accomplishing anything anyway. Just
because all top levels are then menus does not mean that the perceived
experience is any more coherent - Id argue that it's less coherent because
it's unexpected and still does not conform. I understand the initial
reaction to try and fit everything into the new menus, but in cases like
this, the result just ends up (potentially much) worse and still fool noone
that it's one system.

If we choose to use Wine or Java, we expect to step outside the blessed
sandbox - now let us do that, please.

So the question is: can Wine/Java apps be considered cornercase-y
> enough for this sub-optimality to be accepted?
>

No. Anecdotal, of course, but I know of exactly zero people on Ubuntu that
does not run at least Wine to get at least Spotify which relies somewhat
heavily on having a systray icon. At work, I also have a Java systray icon
from DavMail without which I could not practically use Ubuntu at work (not
impossible, just much harder, esp the calendar and Evolution is a crashing
joke). Though the DavMail icon would suffer less from being in a menu, it
does communicate that it's working etc by changing appearance so it's not
nice to hide it in menu or window, even though it's rarely important.

The solutions here are, for Spotify: get a Linux client or provide an
alternative - native app, plugin to Rhythmbox etc - there's a non-free
library and several open efforts. And for DavMail: if it's possible for Java
to use the menus in a nice way, bugfiling or even patches.

That's two examples that concern me. There's more. Steam, for instance, is a
huge thing when it comes to gaming in Wine, since a lot of games do work
well. They are rumored to release a Linux client though, and at that point
they could probably be petitioned to behave nicely.

Just don't break my desktop experience with what I feel is essentially
misdirected efforts, doing nothing to make the desktop more usable while
also not making it seem more coherent in any way.

Thanks.

/ K