unity-design team mailing list archive

[Petko <pditchev@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 02/28/2012 09:10 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote:
> This question pops up from time to time. Some people would like to 
> reorganize their indicators on the panel. I don't know exactly how 
> that order is determined. (I would like to, so please tell). In this 
> case, the specific question on AskUbuntu was how to move the weather 
> indicator closer to the datetime indicator. The question can be found 
> here: 
> http://askubuntu.com/questions/108591/reorganize-indicators-in-unity
> I think that's a valid use-case, but there are things to consider. 
> There are at least two different groups of indicators; the 
> app-indicators and the system indicators.  If it should be possible to 
> reorganize the indicators at all, should it be possible to move 
> app-indicators among the system indicators? If app-indicators should 
> be reorganizable, but the system indicators not, then should the 
> difference be highlighted in some way?
> There is something to be said for consistency and I think it's 
> specially important for system indicators. For app-indicators, 
> however, I have experienced the wish to move some of them. For a 
> while, I used the system monitor indicator, for instance. Since it 
> uses graphics with colors (which does make sense for that indicator), 
> I would want to have it at the very left end of the indicator area so 
> not to break them up visually.
> I think we can agree that we need a good tool for the Launcher. 
> (Editing static quicklists, creating new entries, etc) Would it make 
> sense if that tool would also allow organizing indicators, choose 
> which to load at startup, when they should be visible, etc? At least 
> for a short while, you could choose that for bluetooth and audio, and 
> I think for power, in the system settings under different panels. 
> Transmission and other applications will have that in their respective 
> preferences. It would be a good thing if these things were collected 
> in one place, I think. Perhaps adding Launcher and Indicators to the 
> System Settings > Appearance panel?
>
> Thoughts?
My thoughts are that it wouldn't be well accepted to add that much more 
options - a whole new system options dialogue . What I think is more 
reasonable is to change the behaviour of the custom indicators to allow 
them to be dragged (I think the messages ,network and sound indicators 
should be movable too,but I don't know how that will stand with Mark and 
the developers) . I find it natural to have some customization options 
on right-click on a panel (whichever panel it may be) , but in this case 
I'm with the conservative bunch and think that it's not necessary (if 
the above is implemented) .
Also I'd like to mention this idea : "Let's have a small icon with a 
brush ,or something similar that means customization , in the upper or 
lower right corner of the menu (power-cog or whatever it's called) that 
will open a simple checklist dialogue with a whitelist of items that may 
be added or excluded from the menu ."  from here : 
https://lists.launchpad.net/unity-design/msg08385.html
Petko