unity-design team mailing list archive

[Frederik Nnaji <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

hello Mark,

you are suggesting the introduction of a "generic throbber" over an
indicator menu..
did i understand that correctly?

or spinny, as you stated.

With "spinny" ¹ , are you referring to the redesign of the mouse
cursor for better indication of state which happened quite a few years
ago?


On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 10:37, Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>   2. A throbber for work-in-progress
>

thank you ;)
this would be a cool feature;)

>
 => So, we'll create a throbber / spinny animation for the Me Menu that
> will be active while the broadcast message is being sent.
>

  3. A green flash for success
>

perhaps keep a notification open until the indicator system knows that
the user is acknowledging/has acknowledged the situation..
in particular, such failure indicates some sort of network failing in
the background, which deserves being promoted into the user's
awareness..

> When we wish to signal a warning, we use orange or red depending on the
> criticality. We may use it in a persistent fashion or as a temporary
> indicator.

this should be "persistent until acknowledged"-class of notification:
"one of your tasks has just started up/is now failing/requires your
attention""

i strongly do not recommend hierarchically organized concepts of
failure categorically coloured in my focal point...

we should focus on informing the human operator about constructively
useful events and possibilities.
Why expose constraint so obviously? Constraint is supposed to be a
child of Opportunity, not its parent within a conditional dependency
tree.

We are interested in success, failure deserves no more than intuitive
registration.

or is this part of your draft _not_ in some way referring to your
proposed mouse_cursor_as_an_indicator_menu in the top paragraphs of
your mail..?


> For example, when you are disconnected from the wifi network,
> a red highlight appears on the wifi indicator. Also, when a security
> update has been installed but requires a restart to be effective, we
> introduce a red effect on the session menu ("on/off") indicator. We also
> have a pattern of signalling which element of the menu is associated
> with the warning - for example, the fact that the "Restart" menu item
> will be coloured red and changed in text when a restart is required from
> 10.10 onwards.
>
>  => So, when a broadcast message fails, we will use an orange or red
> visual touch to indicate that. We need to debate and decide whether it
> should be a transient indication (a flash) or a persistent state
> indication (a red/orange element on the icon, or a red/orange effect
> around the icon). We also need to decide whether it is a warning
> (orange) or a failure (red), and if it is persistent, how to signal
> which element of the menu is associated to it. For example, we might
> choose to put a persistent orange glow on the Me Menu when the last
> broadcast failed, and to outline the text field in that menu in orange -
> distinct from the theme's focus colour - as well.
>
> Mark

this fits to the "redesigning the mouse cursor" thread from this mailing list.
I believe the changes you are proposing deserve a bit of discussion
here, not to prevent anything from being developed, but to raise
everybody's awareness to their significance..



¹ "From hard experience, we've learned that the engineering of the spinny
needs to be very performance-aware, otherwise it can create an
unnecessary drain on CPU and battery."