unity-design team mailing list archive

["frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx" <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello MPT,

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 12:25, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx wrote on 03/11/10 23:08:
> >...
> > On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 17:49, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >...
> >> Vishnoo wrote on 17/10/10 11:39:
> >...
> >>> Is there a reason Unity's Launcher has tooltips for applications and
> >>> places? [While Application icons could be considered as
> >>> unrecognizable, Places icons are our custom icons so they should at
> >>> least be a bit recognizable. Still not sure how these tooltips are
> >>> more important...]
> >>
> >> For the most part, menu title icons convey pretty simple ideas.
> >> Network, sound, keyboard, power. And they stick around for a long
> >> time, so you can learn them.
> >>
> >> Launcher items sometimes are simple items, but sometimes complex ones.
> >> And often they don't stick around as long. For instance, you might
> >> install a bunch of free programs that do the same thing, to compare
> >> them before keeping just one, and their icons may look alike. That
> >> makes text labels more useful for them.
> >
> > i'd suggest going through the Ayatana Indicator Menus for cases of
> > mutual exclusion.
> > If you e.g. remove "Available" from the Me Menu and display
> > [ON|OFF] Chat
> > [ON|OFF] Busy Mode
> > [ON|OFF] People
> > instead.
> > "Stand By" aka AFK aka Away would be an automatic Presence state that
> > fades slow enough for the user to actually notice.
>
> That's an interesting way of solving the problem of how to set a
> "do-not-disturb" mode without going online. However, it would be slower
> in going from offline to any state other than the one you'd previously
> been in. It also wouldn't allow for any other IM statuses, e.g. "Away"
> or "Invisible".
>
> Maybe there is a variation of your idea that would avoid those problems.
>

i'll rethink it thoroughly, thanks for pointing out the difficulties to me
;)


> > I'm mentioning this in the context at hand, because you need less
> > explanatory text i.e. text labels, if you have dynamic menu items like
> > [on|off] toggles¹ for example or mutually exclusive items such as
> > "connect|disconnect", "show|hide" or "maximize|restore" or
> > "mute|unmute"
>
> I don't see what that has to do with tooltips for applications, places,
> or menu titles.
>

i see it, but i fail to get myself across with all the noise i'm causing..
sorry!

> Contact List itself would be more useful if one could dock it to a
> > desktop corner and remove the window decoration.
>
> I don't think that has anything to do with tooltips for applications,
> places, or menu titles either. I suggest proposing it to the Empathy
> developers. (Maybe attach a screenshot of the equivalent option in Adium.)
>
> >                                                  At least " Context
> > Menu Information|Edit" should open a docked information field, instead
> > of that currently existing tooltip which obscures the very list i'm
> > trying to look at aggressively upon mouse over imo..
>
> I agree with the desire to tame the massive tooltips. But it would be
> counterintuitive to have to choose an "Edit" menu item just to see
> someone's account name.
>
> Perhaps the problem could instead be fixed partly by reducing the amount
> of stuff in the tooltip (no need to repeat information that's already
> visible), and partly by positioning it alongside the contact list
> instead of over top of it.
>
> >                                                      The greatest bug
> > is that Contact List's tooltips afford urls in blue, underlined, i.e.
> > for interaction, but you can't click on them, because they are
> > non-interactive tooltips.
>
> Have you reported it?
>

Ken Sharp has:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/empathy/+bug/592838
I suggest anyone who feels affected by this might wanna confirm that in LP.
That could already help to give this problem more heat and then, in a
further step, make tooltips better in Ubuntu.

 > Tooltips are more useful if they are interactive, that's why i like the
> > term you chose: text labels. And a label is usually beside it's parent
> > button, not obscuring other buttons. Imagine doorbells: they have
> > name-labels attached to them, usually sideways, not obscuring other
> > buttons in the list.
> >
> > Or do you mean something else with text labels?
>
> Vish asked about tooltips for applications and places vs. menu titles.
> Your reply, about "semantic ontology capable software technology",
> "scalable technologies", "conventionalized language", "visual
> superlanguage", and a "highly elitarian form of communication", gave me
> a headache. As treatment, I set myself the challenge of answering Vish's
> question about tooltips, using only words of one or two syllables.


:D
i was thinking aloud too much, i'll try and wrap it up in the future, less
OT dreaming, promised!