unity-design team mailing list archive

[Tommy Bongaerts <tommy.bongaerts@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Most of the current big changes in the Unity shell are serious
regressions in my opinion. I think Unity as shipped with 11.04 is much
better. Here are the reasons why:

It has the 'Ubuntu botton' integrated in the top panel. I thought that
this was a very good idea, because it is in a way the 'window' into the
system. With the 'Ubuntu button' inside the launcher, there no longer
is a clear distinction. I also think it looks more pleasing to the
eye, as it makes the launcher look more or less 'locked' into the top
panel.

The dash now has close/minimize/maximize widgets, just like regular
windows. Very bad idea. It is /not/ a regular window, and should not
be treated as such. Using the 'Ubuntu button' (or the 'super' key) to
open/close the Dash made perfect sense

When an application is maximized, the close/minimize/maximize widgets
are hidden by default. To make them appear, the user has to hoover
over the top panel. This means aiming twice: once to make the widgets
appear, and then again to click on the desired widget. Seems very
counterproductive to me.

The same is valid for the global menus by the way, but I never found
this to be problematic myself. Still, it would be a good idea to at
least provide a user setting to keep the global menus displayed by
default.

The application name still gets clipped (with a 'fade out') when the
global menu is displayed. I think that this looks extremely bad. I'd
keep the application name fully displayed at all times, and have the
menu next to that. Okay, this would mean that the position of the menu
is no longer absolute, but that's not a big deal I think.

In relation to the previous item, when the application name stays
displayed at all times, it could be turned into an indicator-like
button, sporting all kinds of 'services' for the current application.
These services could include eg. 'kill application', 'take snapshot',
'move to workspace', 'hide', 'tile left/right'...

It would also be nice if the user had to option not to use 'global'
menus if they want to.

Anyway, I've created a couple of mock-ups to make clear how the panel
ideally would look like in my opinion:

http://www.drumscum.be/var/unity_menu_maximized.png
http://www.drumscum.be/var/unity_menu_windowed.png
http://www.drumscum.be/var/unity_window-menu.png

Please let me know what you think.

-- 
Look, the thing about my family is there's five of us.
Marge, Bart, Girl Bart, the one who doesn't talk, and
the fat guy. How I loathe him.
	~ Homer J. Simpson