unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ed Lin <edlin280@xxxxxxxxx>]

There's some oftopic in at the beginning, considerer yourself warned.
You can skip to the marking.

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:00 AM, GonzO <gonzo@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 8:49 PM, Ed Lin <edlin280@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>> With all due respect: I do not think your cases are all that common.
>>
>> I never claimed the contrary. BTW I don't use Unity and probably never
>> ever will (I'll spare you the reasons, it wouldn't be pretty).
>
> I do not know whether or not anyone Official(TM) reads this list.
> However, if the reasons for never ever wanting to use Unity aren't
> aired, it'll never get better.
>
> Better out than in, I say, but that is something best left to your
> discretion.  :-)

OK, so it basically comes down to a few factors:
The first one doesn't really have to do with Unity:
I don't see myself switching to a Linux based OS on the desktop
anytime soon because for what I do proprietary applications deliver
the better tools. Good applications take a long time to be written and
maintained, this costs money ("developers need to eat too") and FOSS
development will always stay behind unless we can find a solution to
how to fund free software on a large scale.

Secondly, this is speculation on my part, but I believe Unity will
generally follow in the steps of GNOME 2 in it's focus on usability
for inexperienced users by default with additional options for
everybody else. The default experience is unusable for me (both Unity
and GNOME 2) and I have no interest in configuring my desktop more
than absolutely necessary with a bunch of options that are
afterthoughts and never quite work as they should. Other desktops are
perfectly usable for me almost without any tweaking, I don't see the
point of giving that up.

Finally, I deeply care about polish, consistency, bug-free-ness and
optimization. This seams to be "unsexy" for developers and often gets
the shorter end in FOSS development. GNOME 2 has been on the market
for about 9 years and never managed to reach a level that pleased my
admittedly high standards. Why should Unity fare any better (and do so
soon)? All I see is code monkeys doing design work (no offence
intended, I said it won't be pretty :P )

(Please prove me wrong though!)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> The problem I have with this is not its implementation, but the idea
> itself.  I don't think putting indicators into the launcher is a good
> idea, what-used-to-be-a-panel notwithstanding.  My reasons for this:
....

All good reasons but if the panel stays, what about the user case of
Chromium with tabs on top? The browser is already the most used
application and this trend is only going up. Especially on a netbook
with Chrome OS soon being the main competitor (and not Windows) the
browser experience should receive priority.

With some patching (i.e. less than making a tab indicator for the
panel) I think a "wing panel" could work with tabs on top (just as
Chrome OS has indicators at the top as well. But regardless, the
indicator area could be smaller, we don't need the shutdown button
there, it could be in the dash, we don't need a mail icon there unless
the user has new mail, we don't need the full user name there by
default. By slimming it down we'd win both space for other controls
that are more frequently accessed and reduce clutter and distraction.


> And this is something Unity is _already_ somewhat bad at.  Trash isn't
> a launcher - or, it launches Nautilus, which already has a launcher.
> Virtual Desktops, not a launcher.  Two different lenses taking up two
> different tiles, when the functionality of each is merely a spin-off
> of the Dash.  They _are_ launchers, but that's two more launchers than
> is really necessary or desirable.  And none of these are removable
> except the lenses, where you actually have to uninstall Unity
> functionality to remove them.

Yes, absolutely agree. You remember
https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg05788.html ?


> #2: Indicators that contain text, like the date/time app, are almost
> impossible to display sanely in a launcher square.  "September" all by
> itself won't fit unless the text is so small its squint-worthy.  The
> username indicator would be a problem in my office, where usernames
> are typically full first+last name.

The biggest reason why I don't actually like my own idea.
At least now we can say we tried... ;)


> #5: Indication.  I'm not sure we even _can_ display a speaker icon
> with varying numbers of "waves" to indicate volume, or a "link
> down"/"link up" pair even if each indicator would be its own launcher
> tile, which wouldn't work.

Things like that are certainly technically possible though.
Launcher icons already can display dynamic content (like the Firefox
download bar)

> I _could_ see a single, expandable tile functioning as a "systray"
> area on the launcher; Cairo-Dock has this already, and this is how
> Windows behaves if you move the taskbar to either side of the screen.
> This would solve lots of those problems, but still be on the dock, and
> still incredibly hard on text-based indicators (someone with a long
> username, date/time, etc.).  Not to mention, if you're an indicator
> freak, that tray area could grow to two or three squares, and how do
> you collapse it?  Do you allow it to be collapsed?

There could be the option to make a toggle-able bottom bar that would
stay always visible if the user wanted to. On larger monitors there
would really be no tradeoff (the bottom screen-edge isn't used by any
application controls except in fullscreen mode). On smaller screens
you wouldn't have all indicator applets visible and accessible all the
time.


> In closing, I apologize if the last few messages come off as a "Hey,
> everyone, let's get Ed Lin!" pile-on.  By and large, I agree with a
> lot of the ideas you've had; I just think the indicator-in-launcher
> thing is a non-starter.
>
No, thank you for your input. It's been very helpful. Feel free to
point out any issues in my proposals you can find.