unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ed Lin <edlin280@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 4:11 AM, Caio Alonso <caioalons@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> First of all, sorry for not knowing the right name of this window, I just
> know it as "the one that shows up when the Ubuntu button is clicked".
It's the Dash
http://askubuntu.com/questions/10228/whats-the-right-terminology-for-unitys-ui-elements


> 1) When using the Applications lens looking for an internet application for
> example: if the application I'm looking for is not included in the first 6
> shown, I must click again to get to it. But seeing that there is unused
> space, why can't the Installed section be already expanded to 12
> applications when I open it? Take a look: http://i.imgur.com/4IgH8.png

I'd go even further and make it a list that expands to the bottom of
the screen on non-touch devices (=an option).
See Spotlight in OS X. Higher information density yet it's quicker to
absorb and process that information, for me at least.
Also it makes more sense for keyboard navigation: ever tried using
left and right to navigate the icons only to realize you are still in
the search box? This can't happen in a vertical list.

> 2) The second point is in the way the applications are ordered. As can be
> seen on the previous screenshots cited, they are currently ordered
> alphabetically. Has ordering them by frequency of use been considered as an
> alternative or would changing the icon's positions over time break the
> muscle memory of going to the old icon position?
I urge everyone who has access to Mac OS X to try out Quicksilver,
they get searching and ranking right to the point of perfection.
You can "teach" it so for example "ff" gives Firefox as the first
result even though it doesn't contain that exact string.

Here's a website that kind of demos some of this:
http://static.railstips.org/orderedlist/demos/quicksilverjs/
http://orderedlist.com/blog/articles/live-search-with-quicksilver-style/

GNOME-Do or other launchers available on Ubuntu might support this too
by now, haven't kept myself up-to-date on this.

> 3) If the user chooses to maximize this window, why isn't this choice kept
> for all the next times he opens it?
I second this question.