unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Mark Shuttleworth wrote on 28/02/12 07:59:
> 
> On 27/02/12 14:51, Jeremy Bicha wrote:
>> 
>> On 27 February 2012 08:06, Nekhelesh Ramananthan
>>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> Reading through the replies from Mark Shuttleworth, Paul, Omar
>>>  B., I propose the following solution.
>>> 
>>> 1. Integrate Startup Applications into the gnome control
>>> center (removal from power cog menu)


As shrouded.cloud (quoted by nick rundy) pointed out, the "Displays"
item is already a panel in gnome-control-center. So whether "Startup
Applications" is integrated into gnome-control-center isn't relevant
to whether the item is present in this menu.

(That said, I agree it would be good to integrate it, and here's a
design I prepared earlier.
<http://live.gnome.org/Design/SystemSettings/Proposals/LoginItems#Proposal>)

>>> 2. Add an option to restart in the power cog menu.


"Restart" was demoted to the Shut Down dialog partly because the menu
had so many items, and partly because we thought all use cases for
restarting could present a context-sensitive interface instead (for
example, <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareUpdates#After_installing>).

We totally missed the use case Paul Sladen mentioned in this thread --
restarting a dual-booting system into the other OS. I plan to design a
solution for that as part of my session handling design work.
<http://launchpad.net/bugs/165065> (It doesn't necessarily require
promoting "Restart" back to the top level of the menu: for example, we
could have a "Restart Into Windows" menu item present only when you
are dual-booting. On the other hand, it would be a bit weird to have a
"Restart Into Windows" item but not a "Restart [into Ubuntu]" item,
and equally weird to have a "Restart [into Ubuntu]" item present if
you dual-boot but not if you don't.)

>>> 3. The shutdown dialog should have a 60 second timeout which 
>>> still brings about the "undo" functionality but also removes 
>>> the need to confirm it again by just letting it countdown to 
>>> zero. 4. Option to enable or disable login sound be presented 
>>> in the sound settings dialog or under user accounts (so that 
>>> each user can choose to disable or enable it)
>> 
>> Would someone like to go ahead and open a bug against 
>> gnome-control-center for #4, and for #1 against gnome-session to 
>> request that it show in System Settings? I already opened 
>> http://pad.lv/941697 for #3.
> 
> +1 though I'm still interested in MPT's rationale for startup apps
>  in that menu, it may be we haven't considered a use case that 
> warrants the exposure.


As you know, Mark, I have always maintained (most strongly in a
meeting with you on May 13th last year) that the menu should not
contain System Settings items at all.

Presenting system settings, software updates, and session commands in
a single interface element might make sense if it was branded as an
"Ubuntu" menu, like they are presented in the Windows-branded Start
menu and the Mac's Apple menu. (If that happened, though, the Dash
home button would need different branding to avoid clashing. An
alternative would be to embed the functions into the Dash home screen
itself -- as I also suggested at that meeting -- though that would
require the Ubuntu button to be visible more often than the launcher
currently is.) But I don't think such a varied collection of functions
could make sense with any other branding. Users can't be expected to
predict that a particular menu contains software updates but not
software search, attached scanners but not attached disks.

The vacillation since about what the menu's title should be -- first
power-cog, then power icon with cog overlay, and now power-cog again
- -- is a symptom of the problem I described then. The icon is trying to
communicate the incommunicable.

Since you required System Settings items in the menu, though, John Lea
chose Displays, Startup Applications, and Printing as his guess of
which panels were most used, and I didn't feel like debating that.
(Soon afterwards, Printing was subsumed by Printers in the "Attached
Devices" section.)

>> Since as already been stated, adding a restart option to the 
>> system menu would require an "are you sure"-style popup which is
>>  already provided by the existing shut down dialog, I don't think
>>  that's necessarily a useful improvement or has consensus.
> 
> Agreed, that's not happening. Restart is an option in the shutdown 
> dialog, which is perfectly reasonable.
> 
> The 60 second story is pending some word from MPT, too.


The shutdown and logout dialogs (and the restart dialog, when it was
separate) used to have a 60-second countdown. We dropped it because it
is wrong to assume that the computer will shut down or log out by
itself once the countdown reaches zero. After all, the countdown might
immediately be followed by one or more alert boxes of the form "Save
changes to “Untitled” before closing?" -- alert boxes which are not,
and cannot safely be, subject to the same kind of countdown.

The story of nick rundy's parents is an awkward one. But the only way
to be sure that an Ubuntu, Mac, or Windows PC will log out or shut
down safely is to wait a few seconds to answer any questions it asks
after you choose that command. Developing and universally adopting a
standard auto-save API, so that users never need to save documents
manually, might solve much of that problem. Changing the design of the
shutdown dialog would not.

Cheers
- -- 
mpt
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAk9NIu4ACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecoQBQCfXj1Zn5Smli+X7lGZb+cYQzzA
RJ0AnjVNI7apM2vlilXFZjbvQ3L89LPY
=PcC2
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----