unity-design team mailing list archive

[Luke Benstead <kazade@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is just something I've thought about...

In 10.10 we'll have two "group" indicators; the messaging and sound menus.
Both of these menus allow applications to run inside them, by this I mean
when the window is closed they continue to run in the background available
from the indicator. So these "background" applications are Gwibber,
Evolution(?), Empathy and soon Rhythmbox. There are of course others that
attach to the menus.

Now, what I've experienced is a range of inconsistency outside of the
default applications. For example, there is a Thunderbird plugin for the
messaging menu, but closing the Thunderbird window quits the application,
which is not what I expect.

I think it would be a good idea to remove the minimize button from
applications that appear in the group indicators (and run in the
background). For two reasons:

1. This removes the ambiguity surrounding "where did my window go". At the
moment, if the Gwibber window isn't visible, it's either in your taskbar, or
it's available in the indicator. If there was no minimize button then the
only option would be "close" which would send it back to the indicator
applet. You'd always look there for Gwibber.
2. It forces non-default applications to behave consistently. Without the
possibility of minimizing, application developers would make sure that if
they integrate with a group indicator they continue to run when the main
window is closed.

Thoughts?

Luke.

P.S. I'm only talking about apps that run in the group indicators, not
things like Transmission which have their own indicators.