unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matt Richardson <m.richardson.1990@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry it replied to Evan, not Ayatana

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [Ayatana] More information in indicator menus
Date: 	Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:54:50 +0000
From: 	Matt Richardson <m.richardson.1990@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: 	Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>



The reason for hover instead of clickable tabs was to allow the user to
launch the application with the same number of clicks as currently
Current: Click indicator, Click 'Mail'
New: Click indicator, Click Envelope.

With clickable tabs this becomes:
Click indicator, click mail tab, click 'Mail'

Introducing extra clicks is fine on a touch screen as clicks are quick
but is something complained a lot about by desktop users.
If the icons aren't intuitive of themselves, what about putting the
current titles (Mail, Chat and Broadcast) under the icons?

Also, as far as putting the status icons at the top: fine just as easy.
This is just an initial idea.

I will probably make a working mockup in flash (no flaming please) to
see if any usability issues arise.

Thanks for your support
Matt

On 18/11/11 21:18, Evan Huus wrote:
>  On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Matt Richardson
>  <m.richardson.1990@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>   wrote:
> >  Recently Ian Santopietro made some mockups for how Unity might look on a
> >  phone or a desktop.
> >  I love the way his phone indicators look and the amount of information they
> >  show and I think we should migrate them to the desktop. I have done a mockup
> >  below to show how they would display:
> >
> >  Mockup
> >
> >  Clicking an indicator would show the menu as now.
> >  Clicking a message would load the appropriate window (email, chat etc).
> >  Clicking the Email/Chat/Broadcast icons would load the appropriate program.
> >  Hovering over the Email/Chat/Broadcast icons for 0.3 seconds, see later)
> >  would display the extra options currently available in the menu (i.e.
> >  Hovering over the Email button would display options for 'Compose new
> >  message' and 'Contacts').
> >  The 0.3 second delay on hovering is simply to prevent accidental switching
> >  between categories when moving the mouse to select an option under the
> >  current category (e.g. The user tries to change their status to 'Busy', but
> >  as they move their mouse down, they pass over the Broadcast icon and the
> >  menu changes)
> >  If the person you are chatting with has a profile picture, this would be
> >  displayed instead of the blank avatar in the menu or the chat symbol in the
> >  notification area.
> >  Other menu options would behave as now (change status, open chat window with
> >  selected content)
> >
> >  Any thoughts/issues?
> >  Matt
>  1) I absolutely *love* the style.
>  2) Why the hovering to change tabs. Why not make them regularly
>  clickable like normal tabs?
>  3) On second thought, why the tabs at all? They're not intuitively
>  distinguishable with icons (I assume the envelope is Thunderbird, but
>  really all of them are envelope-related, thus their presence in the
>  menu in the first place), and there doesn't look like enough space for
>  text labels.
>  4) I absolutely *love* the style :)
>
>  This looks like a massive improvement over the current situation
>  (which is still pretty good to be honest). I have some quibbles with a
>  few pieces of it, but this is definitely a direction that needs
>  exploring further.
>
>  Thank you for putting this together.
>
>  Evan
>
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