unity-design team mailing list archive

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

On 14. feb. 2012 13:35, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> In other words, instead of maintaining multiple, shallow codepaths, we 
> are able to maintain fewer, *deeper* codepaths. Perceived quality 
> doesn't come from the number of options. It comes from the level of 
> refinement of the options presented. And quality is our goal.

I absolutely, and whole-heartedly, agree with this. I love the launcher, 
and I love having it out of sight, but it's been difficult to love 
opening the dash when the intention was to go back to the previous page 
in Firefox. The small change of adding a "bump" to the edge and between 
screens is quite nice. I think the default sensitivity is a little high. 
I've set it to the midway between the default and low in Appearance > 
Behavior, and that's pretty much perfect for me. That's the kind of 
balancing the gaming industry has perfected and there's something to 
learn from that. It's not the number of monsters that count, or how they 
look. It's the total experience when playing the game that's important.

Another example of small, but highly important fixes, is the scrollbars. 
I installed that in 11.10 before I upgraded to Precise, and I think 
that's when it really came home to me how important those details are. 
This is so much more comfortable in Precise than it was in 11.10. 
Resizing windows still isn't as comfortable as it should be, but 
overall, it's _much_ better. Think that might be fixed by making sure 
the scroller isn't displayed when moving the pointer from outside of the 
window and inwards.

People often say things like "open source is all about choice, so give 
me options!" I love having the option of using a shell that provides 
fewer, but more refined options. The "locally integrated menus" seems to 
be another step in the right direction.

… and still two months to go! :)

Jo-Erlend Schinstad