unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ed Lin <edlin280@xxxxxxxxx>]

You might have noticed me writing a lot about some quite fundamental
interface paradigms in Unity in the last days. I've limited myself to
rising questions and coming up with arguments against certain aspects
of Unity. Here I'll try to hint at some possible solutions both to my
own criticisms and several issues brought up here, in launchpad and
other places (reddit r/linux and r/ubuntu) by others.

I'll concentrate on following:
1) moving the menubar back into windows
2) the launcher in the user case of switching and managing individual windows
3) removing the top panel all together - what happens to the info area
in the top right?

1)
I'll spare you any more words on the whys but what if we moved the
menubar back - what problems would arise?

It's all about screen real estate and a bit Fitts's Law again.
About hiding the menubar within windows see "[Ayatana] Ideas for Unity
Design Tweaks", the post by Anthony Scire and replies.

For maximized windows I've written about Haiku in my first reply
there. Here's a mockup for a possible solution:
http://i.imgur.com/KonSp.jpg
The window title would behave exactly the same as an ordinary title
bar: you can double click, you can drag to another workplace, you can
right click to access the context menu where you can send to another
workplace, set "always on visible workspace" and so on. The title bar
needs to have a maximum length after which it should fade out (see
latest Chromium builds for an inspiration) so there's room left for
the menu. The window controls and the menu itself must align with the
screen edge. The color would depend on the chosen theme, when using
Clearlooks for example the active maximized window would have a blue
title but the menu would be light grey (i.e. just as if title and menu
were separate bars like in non-minimized windows.

2)
I've written a mail titled "What are the advantages of an
application-centric interface?" One paragraph was "Window Management".
Here's an idea how to improve switching windows when you have more
than one window per application open.

The current approach is to present all windows in a scale view. Worst
case scenario: You have a large wide-screen display (or even worse,
two...) and you work in a window tiled to the right side of the
screen. Now you need to switch to anther window. You move your mouse
all across the display, hit the launcher. In the scale view you find
the window you need is the outer right one. So back across the display
once more.

http://i.imgur.com/0CLGC.jpg
A user clicks (or only hovers?) on a launcher icon. Semi-transparent
thumbnails, fading out to the right hint that 2 windows are open and
that the user might want to move the mouse to the right to reveal
them.

http://i.imgur.com/ZbYZ6.jpg
The user drags the mouse into the direction of thumbnail windows. They
become larger (but still smaller than the full scale view) and more
solid. They are arranged in such a way that the mouse can be dragged
in one straight line (pie menu).

This is to some parts inspired by this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8s8tZYihps&sns=em
It makes sense both for mouse and touch control and should answer some
of the complaints about how in Unity switching windows is slower than
in GNOME (2,3).
Only one click is necessary, the mouse doesn't have to travel over the
desktop, the arrangement of windows can be more predictable (e.g.
chronologically) and it gives a better indication over what and how
many windows are open per application.

Somewhat related: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/733349 my
comment is at #49

3)
If we get rid of the global menu, where should we put the information
applets from the upper left corner?

Two ideas:
We keep the top panel. It could be made slimmer because those items
are less frequently accessed and easy to hit anyways. But it still
would result in wasted space and a full screen edge that could be put
to better use by 3rd party application developers. It also would again
result in some hackery and interface inconsistency with maximized
windows:
There is no clear separation between window elements (title, window
controls and menu) and OS level elements (clock, battery, network,
status).

The remaining obvious option is to move it into the launcher, bottom
left corner (this also means no autohide anymore). I guess this
doesn't sound very popular in part due to the completely broken nature
of other panels that can optionally be moved to the side (GNOME panels
and most prominently, the windows task bar). I do however think that
there isn't necessarily any trade-off involved. It could be an
revolutionary improvement over the info areas of all other DEs and OSs
currently in use.

Basically my idea is to make a more dynamic, more intelligent and
better integrated info area. It could be minimalistic and more
powerful at the same time.
The only static element is the clock, it's the only element every user
really needs visible and wants visible all the time. Other elements
such a battery, Bluetooth and network don't have to be visible on an
Ethernet connected desktop (unless your router crashes, then it should
notify the user). On the other hand, a user might want to have the
play back controls for banshee visible all the time and someone
looking for an open wifi network on his portable tablet might want to
a list of all APs visible. The current pop menus are very limited, you
can't have open more than one at a time and you can't even keep a
single one open while using applications.

My info area draws inspiration from desktop widgets, Chromium OS
"panels" *, Growl and other notifications and the GNOME 3 messaging
tray.
*http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/user-experience/panels

This is draft 0.1...
http://i.imgur.com/6xpGj.jpg
Clicking  (or a hot corner like Activities in G3) the lower left
corner reveals a full info-bar with an array of different widgets
which can be rearranged or even pinned to the desktop.
Whenever some currently hidden task needs your attention it would
indicate so below/above/overlay the clock and/or give a partial
visible hint akin the previously discussed window pie menu. It could
show the number of new emails or the remaining time on your battery.
But it would only do so if it's really necessary and the user wants to
be kept informed. It would mean less distraction and more relevant
information at a single glance.

Hope you like it, let me know!