unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ed Lin <edlin280@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:29 PM, Niklas Rosenqvist
<niklas.s.rosenqvist@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>> Altogether four icons which I think would leave room enough for app
>> icons on smaller screens.
>
> Do you really think that? Four launchers are in my view a lot of extra
> launchers. What I tried to achieve with my design was that it shouldn't take
> up more space than 2 launchers, and it only took up roughly 1.5.

But your mockup isn't doing half the things the current panel (or my
lenses) does. Try adding a few more icons and it *will* not only look
but be too overcrowded. You need to add some visual separation in any
case which means you'll lost quite some space no matter the design.
Why not do aim for consistency and high usability (large targets on
the edge) then?
The design together with the positioning would still be different
enough not to be mistaken for actual app launchers.

> How are you thinking concerning the indicator's which only interface is
> often a drop down menu and only supporting a 16x16 pixels (roughly) sized
> icon? How would that go well into a lens? We can't force developers to
> create Ubuntu specific panel indicators instead of Gnome as they always have
> done.

I took care of that simply by doing away with 3rd party indicators.
The functionality should be put into the (Unity specific but
abstracted via API) launcher overlay and context menu.

This isn't a poor excuse or workaround. It actually aids the intended
design: to reduce clutter in the notification area.

>> It's too cramped, the targets are too small and the major problem is
>> the shutdown button, it's not on the screen edge.
>
> They aren't smaller then they are today in the top panel, it's the same
> size. And why is it such a problem that the shutdown button isn't in the
> corner? I mean it's not close to being the most used panel indicator, you
> only use it when you want to shutdown and not during a session on which you
> use the others much more frequently.

The panel icons have the same size but the target area is much bigger,
see Fitts.
Shutdown only was an example, what about battery, network, Bluetooth,
audio, messaging...?

For reference: Windows 7: http://i.imgur.com/aUFCg.png
and even more interesting, what happens when you click on an outer icon:
http://i.imgur.com/t0ZpO.png