unity-design team mailing list archive

[Sam Hewitt <hewittsamuel@xxxxxxxxx>]

Nicely done, I agree with less jargon. Let me take that further: we could
dispense with the big on/off switch altogether and use checkboxes
throughout to enable/disable since the plus-minus will effectively remove
them.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7027392/unity-settings-panel-home.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7027392/unity-settings-panel-applications.png

Or we leave the big switch and when off it would disable the lens and grey
out the underlying feature options.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7027392/unity-settings-panel-applications2.png

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:30 PM, Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Oops, I accidentally sent this to just Mark a while ago. Sorry, Mark!
>
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:31 AM, Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > On 24/09/12 02:29, Sam Hewitt wrote:
> >
> > I would like to append
> > https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7027392/unity-settings-keyboard-shortcuts.pngto
> > the above.
> >
> > On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 6:12 PM, Georgi Karavasilev <motorslav@xxxxxxxxx
> >
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Sam has been working on extending his mockups so here are the
> improvements
> >> hitherto (that means "so far"):
> >> https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7027392/main.png
> >> https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7027392/unity-settings-panel-applications.png
> >> https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7027392/unity-settings-panel-home.png
> >> on
>
> One niggle: every string on the right side starts with "Display."
> Instead — especially when you use an On/Off switch — these labels
> should not be actions, but objects. You can find examples of this
> being done correctly in System Settings: "[] Cursor blinks in text
> fields", "Screen Reader [On/Off]", "Automatic backups [On/Off]".
>
> So, I made some changes to the mockup:
>
> http://people.ubuntu.com/~dylanmccall/mockups/unity-settings-panel-applications-dylanmccall-1.png
>
> Some ideas here:
> I don't think it makes sense for the "Off" state in an On/Off switch
> to be destructive. If that must happen, it should be a button. There
> is no turning it back on, after all. Instead, I removed the note about
> that, assuming it is possible to change Unity so a lens can be
> disabled without being uninstalled). I then placed some Add / Remove
> buttons below the list of lenses.
> Usually, the On/Off switch for a selected feature is at the top of
> that feature's settings panel. You can see this most prominently in
> the Ubuntu Online Accounts settings panel. So, I moved it to the top
> here. It's all misaligned and weird looking in my mockup, so that
> would have to be explored further. (Probably just remove the colourful
> box it's sitting in).
> I changed "visible in Dash" to "visible in Dash Home" just to be
> internally consistent. This is likely the first and only exposure to
> Unity's jargon for most users, so using it is really not much
> different from referring to "Linux" and "Xorg".  Here's a second
> mockup sans jargon:
>
> http://people.ubuntu.com/~dylanmccall/mockups/unity-settings-panel-applications-dylanmccall-2.png
>
> >
> >
> > These are getting pretty good, thank you!
> >
> > The On/Off toggles could be on the left pane, so you can see which scopes
> > are enabled immediately.
> >
> > There could be an "Add Scopes" button at the bottom left which takes you
> to
> > the right place in USC to find more scopes.
>
> That would be going against the switch pattern developed by the
> Canonical design team:
> http://design.canonical.com/2012/01/system-settings-for-precise/
> That pattern (or at least something a lot like it) seems to have
> developed as a defacto standard; you can see it happening pretty
> consistently in gnome-control-center 3.6, and in the latest
> gnome-tweak-tool.
>
> I think there's some serious overuse of switches here. As a general
> idea, if you're thinking about putting the switches on the left
> because it's hard to tell which switch is which, switches are the
> wrong choice. Use checkboxes. They're already on the left, after all ;)
>
> A switch makes sense if you have a bunch of options for a given
> feature, in which case an On/Off toggle is a nice, self-explanatory
> way to also turn the entire feature on and off. When the entire point
> of your panel is to turn features on or off (and there are no other
> buttons), the switch is redundant and — since it's squished between a
> bunch of other switches — confusing.
>
> >
> > Otherwise, great start!
>
> I agree :)
>