unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ian Santopietro <isantop@xxxxxxxxx>]

Respectfully, I don't think that is good design. The gradient on the toolbar
make it seem very heavy. It draws your eye to a section of the UI that A.
isn't content, and B. doesn't do very much. And a flat toolbar would
seem disconnected and cobbled on as an add on, rather than a cohesive part
of the interface.

Looking aside the colors, visual separation between the "toolbar" (which is
really more a titlebar) and the "top panel" makes sense in this case, since
the purpose of the top panel is purely informative; there is no
interactivity with its contents. The problem lies in that the Unity Panel
and the iOS information bar serve entirely different purposes. The Unity
panel is interactive, and hosts many application related functions (due to
the menu bar). Drawing the user into the panel visually help to reinforce
the idea that it isn't separate, and should be clicked on.

Then again, that particular tool bar is wasting an awful lot of vertical
space, and on a device that really needs all the pixels it can get it's
hands on. I would have cut the vertical size of the toolbar in half, at
least, and relocated it's functions to the bottom of the smaller pane on the
left, or replaced them with gestures in this case. iOS seems to make decent
use of the Pull-down-to-refresh gesture, which eliminates one button, New
Folders could be created with an empty placeholder at the bottom (a la gnome
shell and workspaces) and settings could either be taken care of in a global
"settings" app, or also handled via a gesture (it should be used rarely, and
thus not warrant a dedicated button on screen). As for Edit, I can't really
place it anywhere, because the functionality isn't immediately clear to me,
which is a UI design issue itself. Not to mention why there are two of them.

In any case, using a purely touch based UI is not a good model for
developing one that would work on any device, and that is where iOS design
is utterly unsuitable for comparison to Unity anyway.

On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 17:35, nick rundy <nrundy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  Please see the following picture of the Apple Ipad for an example of
> "lightened" black toolbars that are not the same darkness as the OS's top
> panel and represent a good design:  http://i.imgur.com/cfWSy.jpg
>
> Note that although the toolbar is technically "black" it is a
> "faded/lightened" black. That is, it is NOT the same color/shade as the
> Top-Panel! This is GOOD design. This is what I describe and have been
> arguing for in my previous e-mails regarding this topic. There are potent
> reasons why the Iphone & Ipad are such strong sellers. Interface design
> choices like this are part of the reason why these devices are such strong
> sellers and well liked. Application toolbars should NOT be a "dark" color
> that shroud the tools in darkness. And they should NOT be the same
> color/shade as the Top-Panel that represents the OS. Apple's design is very
> strong. A "dark" top-panel and a "middle-colored" toolbar that transitions
> to the "white-content."
>
> Why can't Oneiric Ocelot adopt this design pattern?
>
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Ian Santopietro

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