unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jeremy Bicha <jbicha@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, I appreciate the ongoing design work to make the system status
menu ("indicator") area more logical and hopefully more useful. I have
some suggested improvements and thought bringing it up in an email
might be more useful than opening several individual bugs. For
clarity, this is the spec I'm referring to below:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeviceMenuAndUserMenu

Since I help out on the Documentation Team, I value clear user
interface terminology so that users, powerusers, and maybe even
developers can use the same, understandable language. The old session
menu name became unclear when System Settings was added to it, but I
have to say that "device menu" is an even worse name. I strongly
prefer calling this menu the "system menu" since the items here are
generally system actions or configurations. Also, it's parallel to the
power menu having a power settings button and the sound menu having a
sound settings button.

http://pad.lv/815077 was reported about the lack of a Restart button.
It appears as though the spec is that Restart will only be shown if
restart-required updates have not been applied. A typical user will
want to restart to Windows or OS X. A fair number of developers have
another Ubuntu install or Linux distribution they would like to reboot
to use. Requiring users to log out before they restart seems to make a
common usecase more frustrating. If the desire is to reduce menu
option clutter, I suggest keeping the option as Shut Down (or Power
Off might be a good descriptive alternative). And then use a pop-up
like Gnome Shell to allow Restart, Shutdown (automatic after 60
seconds), or Cancel. See http://i.imgur.com/lLPoL.png

Login Items (Startup Applications) has only a very narrow, power user
use case especially in its current condition. I have never used it for
anything useful. For power users, it's easily findable in the Dash.

Since Bluetooth has its own menu, it definitely should not be in the
system menu. Many computers don't have bluetooth support anyway.
Honestly, I strongly question the need to have direct links here to
individual panels of System Settings. The most common options (Power,
Bluetooth, Sound, etc.) already are consistently at the bottom of
their respective menus. Displays also should just work for most
people; for others, set once and then always work.

Devices sounds like it should also include the ability to unmount
removable drives, but perhaps this is a conflict with the Places Lens
thing.

I very much like having System Settings at the top of the system menu
and the Lock/Sleep/Power options at the buttom. I also like the
Software Updates status incorporated into the system menu.

Moving on to the user menu, Online Accounts is not a very useful menu
item. I mean, it's nice to know that it's available but it should
basically just be a one-time action to set it up, especially if Gnome
3.2 ships with only Google enabled as a choice (it's not completely
clear whether Facebook & Twitter will be turned on by default by Gnome
this cycle). However, definitely very useful would be a My Account
button which enables users to easily set their password, account
picture, language, or add another account. Here's another Gnome Shell
screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/Fcjd1.png

Thanks for the chance to comment.

Jeremy Bicha