Hi, my name is Niklas Rosenqvist and I recently sent this message to David Barth who forwarded it to a couple of people and I thought I might post it here as well to see what reactions it might get. I'm fairly new to the ubuntu community and I just joined the ayatana mailing list so forgive me if I'm doing this the wrong way :)
This what I sent to David: "(...) I've been following the development of Unity closely since the project got announced and it truly is a revolution in many ways for the Ubuntu/Linux desktop. I've been playing around with beta2 lately and feel that there are quite a few areas which need further improvement. Since I'm rather new to the Ubuntu community I don't really know how to influence the development of Ubuntu. Therefore I thought I might give a shot at contacting you and maybe you could forward this or something. I would greatly appreciate if I got some response to this, whether it's good ideas or why not. Firstly I want to discuss lenses. Lenses are a really clever new feature in Ubuntu though to me they feel way to bloaty to be a nice integration to the shell. If I haven't mistakenly overlooked a setting, the lenses are supposed to be launched from the launcher and can not easily be found from anywhere else. So the lenses take up a whole lot of room in the launcher, though the main (or only) difference between the lenses is that they search for different things, but they all search. If I would have an AskUbuntu lens, Reddit lens, YouTube lens etc. it would take up a lot of room. Wouldn't it be smarter to just have a Lenses application which you from there choose which lens to search with? When you click the Ubuntu icon in the upper left corner and get presented with the a couple of shortcuts, why not present the lenses “Applications”, “Files and Folders”, “More apps” at the top and then instead of the current fourth lens, or where the below shortcuts are (“Browse the web” etc.) present the user with ”More lenses” where you can see all the currently installed lenses? At the moment you can view all installed applications in the ”Applications”-lens. It's easy to search for a program but sometimes maybe you don't know the name of the program or just want to know what is installed on your system so it makes sense to have the ”Installed applications” category. But if you have 100+ applications installed then it gets really tedious to scroll through that list since they are all sorted in a grid layout. The lenses should really benefit from having an option to sort results as lists or other alternatives so it's easy to scroll through the result and not having to scan both the width and height of the screen. Another feature which the lenses should benefit from is a ”back”-button where needed. Like in the lens which opens when you click the Ubuntu icon. The Ubuntu button separates from the launchers perfectly and you understand that it has another function than the rest of the launchers. But the launcher's trash icon looks exactly as a regular launcher (which I guess it is, but it's function is more integrated into the system). It would be better distinguished from the rest of the launchers if it had a unique look, like the Ubuntu button. Why not make a divided grey button down there with both the trashcan and the now seemingly gone “show desktop“-button, with the same icon theme as the Ubuntu button and the panel? I think that the workspace switcher also should be down here if it can be added elegantly, it really feels out of place to have it as a launcher. That the settings applications have all been organized into the “System settings” application is great. It's a nice and tidy way to administrate your system. Although that it lacks an Unity configuration application (like the CompizConfig Settings Manager Unity plugin) is just wrong. Those kind of settings should be easy to access and not require an extra application. Either include CCSM or create a Unity specific app (I favor the second option). The configurations in the CCSM Unity plugin lacks but one feature, to be able to configure the launcher transparency and not only the panel transparency. As default I think it has a too low opacity which can make the icons hard to distinguish when viewed over a full screen web page with the background light set to toggle or off. I also fully understand the need to have a delay to open the launcher when it hides for a window but the delay is far to long and pauses the work flow. I suggest that half the time should be default (or make this time a setting). It might also be useful to be able to handle the window shadow size from the system settings, without installation of another application. The “aero-snap”-feature is really nice and makes it easier for handling open windows. When you move a window to the edge of the screen with normal speed the animation looks good as it expands over the screen, but when you move it closer pixel by pixel then it just looks buggy. Why make the animation relative to how close you are to the edge when even if the animation shows just an inch of enlargement it snaps to the full size. Make the animation smooth all the way when you are at the edge of the screen instead to avoid misunderstandings. This also applies to when opening the launcher by moving the mouse all the way up in the left corner. When you move your mouse up there you either want to open the menu lens or something on launcher. If you open the menu lens, the launcher opens automatically. So why not show it directly when you are hovering the button instead of when you reach the corner? The Ubuntu Software Center left hand menu looks cramped and could need a redesign with some more white space. Also please include the Opera browser and XBMC by default in the canonical partners or something category. Lastly I just want to say that the global menu bar works exceptionally well and also the overlay scroll bars. Keep up the good job with making Ubuntu the best PC operating system there is! If the above features get looked at Ubuntu will be unstoppable!" So what is your thoughts? :) _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp