unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx>]

Woops. Sorry about that.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [Ayatana] Middle Click Feature For Indicators
Date: 	Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:41:42 +0200
From: 	Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx>
To: 	ayatana@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



On 05. aug. 2011 19:08, Thibaut Brandscheid wrote:
>     * Messaging menu - new Mail
>     * Network menu - connect/disconnect Wifi
>     * System menu - shutdown dialog
>     * Clock - open details of next upcoming calendar entry

Those are very interesting ideas/proposals. I was actually
a little worried when I read about this, but as long as its
just a shortcut to the most frequently used menu item
provided by an indicator, I think it's ok. However...  How do
we guarantee that this will be consistent between indicators?
If it's only available for system indicators, then I think that
creates an inconsistency itself. But if it's also available to
appindicators, then how will the middle click action be
"governed"?

An idea: since these menu items are already well known
to the panel, would it be possible to make a general dialog
to make the user select the menu item to be activated by
middle-clicking the icon? My original thought was to use
Zeitgeist and use the most frequent menu item, but I think
that would be confusing. However, if the first time you
middle-clicked an icon, you were presented with a dialog
enabling you to choose which icon to activate, that would
both be consistent and user friendly. Except for one thing:
people would get different actions for the middle-click,
which would make it more difficult to provide support.

I certainly see the use case, but I'm a little worried that
it would recreate some of the confusion that's been
haunting the "systray"-implementations for ages.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad