unity-design team mailing list archive

[Peterson Silva <peterson.235@xxxxxxxxx>]

That's the most reasonable saying up to the point. I'm with you there! =D

*Peterson*
*http://petercast.net*



On 10 December 2010 16:32, Ryan Prior <ryanprior@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 4:29 AM, Peterson Silva <peterson.235@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > minimize upon click is probably a bad idea. too easy for users to
> > accidentally lose their window
> >
> > Hmm true. So doing nothing is the best behaviour (when there's only one
> > window)?
>
> I think "doing nothing" is probably a bad behaviour; if the user
> clicked there, they probably had an expectation (although
> unpredictable to us, as different platforms bring different UI
> baggage) as to what their click would do. If we do nothing, we defy
> every expectation the user could have possibly had, at the expense of
> providing no information to the user at all and making a less
> confident user wonder whether ze did something wrong, is experiencing
> computer lag, etc. If our official policy for consistency's sake is to
> do nothing, we should still attach some function, even if just a
> cosmetic one.
>
> I suggest that if there's a single window and it's not already
> focused, focus that window; and if it's already focused, put a glowing
> halo border around it which stays until the user's mouse leaves the
> window's Unity launcher icon. That effect is just cosmetic, but serves
> a few purposes:
> * ties the launcher icon to its focused window, reminding the user
> that the requested window is already open and focused
> * acknowledges the user's click without doing anything unexpected
> (making a window disappear, etc)
> * could be used to highlight open windows in screen casts and UI
> demos, if the effect is pretty (and let's be realistic, this is
> Ayatana, it can be gorgeous =D)
>
> my two cents,
> Ryan
>