unity-design team mailing list archive

[Niklas Rosenqvist <niklas.s.rosenqvist@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everybody!
After I've taken part in a lot of discussions since the release of Ubuntu
11.04 I've finally come up with a complete list (for the moment) of features
and changes which I and hopefully the rest of the Ubuntu community would
like to see implemented. Since it's a rather extensive list have I grouped
every topic into sections and accompanied all the features/changes with
mockups.

I had problems with taking screenshots of the dash and context menus, I
later found that this was a bug, so I made many of the UI-elements from
scratch by referencing some Natty Alpha screenshots I found (until I thought
of taking pictures in a virtual machine). If you need a Unity photoshop
template you can download the PSD-file here:

http://tests.nsrosenqvist.com/resources/Unity-2.0.psd.zip

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*Lenses - Dash*
*
*
As the lenses are currently implemented they are not as effective little
applications as they were originally planned to be. First of all, the lenses
inhabiting the launcher are just wasting launcher space. By searching in the
dash you still get the results from the lenses which are installed by
default on a Ubuntu 11.04 installation, without needing to go through their
respective launchers.

When I first heard of lenses I was intrigued but later when I learned that
every lens would take up valuable launcher space they just felt unnecessary.
I wouldn't want to explore new lenses if they were going to occupy my
launcher bar. But I think that by including them into the dash we would more
effectively handle lenses. There would only be one "lens" - the dash - and
within it you could specify further which lens you would like to use if you
aren't happy with the search results. My guess is that most people are using
the dash to search for files and applications, much like they do with
programs as Gnome-Do so this would be the default search feature. But as you
can see in the image provided below you can see how easy it would be to
search from another lens:

http://i.imgur.com/76Jge.jpg

(Note: The icons used for other services are taken off the internet and I
haven't looked up the license terms for them)

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*Launcher bottom area*
*
*
In the previous mockup you might have noticed that in the bottom of the
launcher is a bar with the same height as the top panel and the same width
as the "Ubuntu button" (Sorry for not knowing the correct terminology). I've
removed the trash/wastebasket from the launcher since it has been noted
several times in the ayatana discussions that it can just as easily be
accessed from within Nautilus and isn't important enough to take up a whole
launcher. Though it's very important that new users to Ubuntu are finding
familiar elements to their previous OS of choice (e.g. OS X or Win) and both
provide a clear trash launcher/shortcut. So instead of removing it
completely I integrated it into the bottom area of the launcher together
with the most important part of this area...*
*

I don't know what to call the button farthest down in the left corner since
it's a multifunction button. As default it triggers the workspace switcher,
this enables us to remove it from the launcher, and to be fair it wasn't a
very good place for it to be to begin with. Sure it's on the edge of the
screen but having it in the bottom corner makes it incredibly easy to access
(Fitt's Law), very much like the "show desktop"-button in Win7. Now you can
just through the cursor into the corner and almost always hit it instead of
having to aim for it on the launcher.

But since there are so many ways of switching windows I figured that it
should be configurable to trigger the function which the current user
prefer. By providing a context menu to it together with options to set one
of the following (are there more alternatives?) as default: Workspace
Switcher, Spread, Expo mode, "Alt+Tab", and "Show desktop".

-----

*Toggle background lighting as default and window management*

You might also have noticed that the launchers have their background
lighting set to toggle. In a default Ubuntu 11.04 installation all launchers
have brightly colored backgrounds, this has been shown confusing for new
users (source email: "[Ayatana] Fwd: Re: People expect the backlight colours
on the unity launcher to mean something") since they expect the color to
mean something. I also like that running applications are shown more clearly
instead of just the arrow on the left side of the launcher. It's much easier
to switch between running applications by the launcher with this.

I know that the launcher behaves more like a dock than a task bar but we
have had bunch of discussions on app-centric vs window-centric and I think
in everyone of them we've agreed on that we should make users coming from
both OS X and Win should be somewhat familiar with how it all works. It's
also incredibly frustrating to work with many open windows of the same
application and expose or scale doesn't provide any information of what the
different windows contain if it's either a terminal window or a text
document.

So I propose that either enable expo mode for the current application on
double clicking the launcher, but then also provide close and minimize
buttons and a text box with the window title for both Expo mode and Spread
mode. Or implementing a Win7 like popup.

The Win7 method has been argued many times since the delay on showing the
popup heavily cripples the work flow but this could be fixed with a very
minimal delay so that it doesn't flicker a bunch of popups when scanning the
launcher quickly but as soon as it slows down the popups will start to show.
Together with this and on mouse click showing both the popup and latest used
window it could work. It could be implemented like this:

http://i.imgur.com/9kGkS.jpg

I also made a small but significant change: making the launcher "background
bubbles" look less prominent. Right now when they aren't running and
background light is set to toggle it looks like the launcher is inhabited by
bubbles. That's why I faded the background just a bit, maybe it can be done
more or be redesigned but it look a little bit better at least. Here is an
image showing the change, the left half is how it looks normally and the
right half is it with faded backgrounds:

http://i.imgur.com/g2oMe.jpg

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*Launcher overflow*
*
*
Am I correct to assume that the only reason why there needs to be a Unity 2D
project is that the launcher utilizes 3D effects? In that case I think the
overflow of launchers could be handled with a glow on the side where the
launcher overflows. In my mockup you have to imagine that the glow was on
the bottom earlier but the user scrolled down to the bottom launcher so that
the overflow is now on top. This is because in the mockup I chose to have it
on top to be able to show the launcher bottom area without any additional
distractions. Nuff said:

http://i.imgur.com/SOl9z.jpg

A glow effect like this could provide the same functionality without
3D-effects.

There is also a problem with the scrolling of the launchers. If you scroll
down to select an application the launchers automatically scroll backup
after selection. If I scroll down it means that I want to work with the
applications in focus, not the ones which are set to "keep in launcher".

-----

*Ubuntu Welcome Center*

Today when a new user uses the OS for the first time there is no way for
him/her to know what do next. There is a help program but how is he/she
supposed to find out about it? When I first started using Ubuntu/Linux I had
to go online and read tutorials in blog posts. This isn't a professional way
of handling this problem - leaving it to somebody else. Windows feature a
welcome center program and even Linux Mint does. So why doesn't Ubuntu? I
made this mockup earlier for the thread "[ayatana] Ubuntu Welcome Center".
Imagine it without "install ubunu-restricted-extras" and add a checkbox for
"show on startup" and maybe add an "Open the browser to go online"-button:

http://i.imgur.com/pQkYj.jpg

The discussion in that thread turned away from the subject and became about
the Yelp vs Ubuntu Tour project instead. But the main idea is that we should
give new users a tour of some kind of the OS, much like what the Ubuntu Tour
people are working on but perhaps integrated into Yelp but providing the
tour with a much improved UI.

-----

*Global menu*

The global menu is a much discussed topic in the ayatana discussions, some
can be found in the "global menu in oneric oceleot (11.10)"-thread and the
"Thoughts on unity design"-thread. I myself want to remove the top panel
completely since it removes the choice of how to implement a menu from the
developers. Chromium has a great one button menu and Opera and Firefox as
well but they cannot benefit from their design choices if they are forced to
use a global menu. I would much rather see that chromium's tabs took the
space of the title bar/global menu instead. It also prevents developers to
design relatively to the top edge of the screen (Fitt's law) since the top
panel takes away that possibility for them. Please read the earlier
mentioned discussions to get a complete overview of the pros and cons.

I myself have come to the conclusion that it cannot be removed without a
complete overhaul of the OS, branching away from GNOME completely. The app
indicators would have to be replaced because all third party indicators are
designed for horizontal panels. So therefore the panel probably must stay
for the time being. But I think that there should at least be a
configuration option to turn off the global menu.

Some earlier design sketches which maybe can trigger your imagination:

http://i.imgur.com/f8q2c.png
(clarification: the menu is shown on default and it's state is remembered
per application)

http://i.imgur.com/biN5v.png
http://i.imgur.com/wSLus.png

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*Other thoughts*
*
*
*Launcher context menu**
*
It would be good to have a context menu for the launcher with some logical
options:*
*

http://i.imgur.com/HTaS4.jpg
*
*
*Launcher alignment**
*
Please enable us to align the launchers to both the right and bottom side of
the screen. Blogs often have the content on the left side and navigation to
the right, since we read from left to right we will always be fed
information from the launcher and never be able to fully focus on the
content instead. So please make it configurable for those who want to move
it.
*
*
*Design consistency*
Quick lists and regular context menus, Dash and Ambiance ... it looks
completely different. Please aim for better consistency.*
*

*Ubuntu software center and the repositories*
As always I have some thoughts about the USC but haven't actually made a
mockup of my own. Anyways I'd just like to say that it needs a revamp,
preferably removing the sidebar and integrating it somehow better into
content view. Or follow this mockup's example:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/05/this-awesome-ubuntu-software-centre-mock-up-would-get-my-custom/

OMG! Ubuntu also brought up PPA's and their use today. They are originally
meant to work as way for developers to test the applications but this has
been misused often and serves as an alternative distribution form instead of
the repositories. This is partly because that no application gets upgraded
between the Ubuntu release cycles. So if an application like firefox 5 gets
released in the middle of a release cycle we have to wait to have the most
up to date software. This isn't how it's supposed to be, the users should
always have the most up to date software available. So this needs to be
fixed. Read the following article if you want to learn more:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/05/the-evolution-of-the-personal-package-archive-system/

*A unified Ubuntu design and development platform**
*
There are so many ways to discuss ideas and so few to get them implemented.
There are no good way to submit feature requests except for filing a bug
report, what's up with that? We have mail discussions, Ubuntu brainstorm,
Launchpad, and practically no feedback from the developers. We need a place
where all ideas and bugs can be viewed organized by both designers,
developers and the community. Not by splitting it all up into a new forum
but by removing the existing and start from scratch. In practice an in and
out channel between Canonical, other developers and the rest of the
community.*
*

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Wow! I Hope I haven't forgotten anything now, this took some time :) Thank
you very much for reading and I hope we get a good Oneiric Ocelot to look
forward to!