Re: [Ayatana] [Usability] GNOME Main Menu and the Distribution Logo

[Allan Caeg]

Thanks for the Feedback, Karl.

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Karl Goetz  wrote:
>
> > applet. Branding is just that important for a default GNOME setup.
>
> Who is branding important to? the desktop? the user? the distributor?
>
> Why do you feel its so important?


This is very important for distro marketing. Market share is one of the
issues that Linux advocates arguably have to address. If it's hard to tell
at a glance what system is running on a desktop, there would be an issue. I
don't think that the real estate of desktops is that scarce to completely
get rid of the branding anywhere on the panel.

What are your thoughts?
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Re: [Ayatana] Do you want to delete the applet from your configuration?

[Jarlath Reidy]

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 10:13 AM, Luke Benstead  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Here's this week's bug bear of mine:
> http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/6311/as7ob3.png
>
> ...
> 2. happens. And 90% of the time, a killall gnome-panel gets it working
> again. Surely Gnome panel should attempt to reload it again at least once
> before producing the delete/don't delete ultimatum? If it really won't load,
> we should have a slightly better dialog box with a "Report this bug" type
> feature (how exactly do you report an applet bug?)
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Luke.
>
I agree with you 100%. I didn't even know how do properly communicate this
problem so I never brought it up.

 Are there any bug reports on this already in upstream gnome?

Jarlath
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Re: [Ayatana] Windicators

[Apoorva Sharma]

Hi,

NOTE: I tried to post this earlier, but I might not have been properly
subscribed, so this may or may not be a duplicate. -- Sorry, this is my
first time using a launchpad mailing list.

First of all, I really like the idea of window status indicators. It could
be an extremely useful feature. I also like the idea about being able to see
them in alt-tab. However, I would like to propose another location to put
the windicators, that could also solve some problems that the idea currently
had, IMO.

I've heard that in unity, maximizing the window would add the windicators to
the panel, thus saving space. However, this behavior could possibly lead to
some negative consequences. The one I feel is most important is it would add
clutter.

Lucid made several strides in cleaning up the panel - standardizing the
indicator behavior, and making the icons look similar. I feel that this
progress could be reversed if all windicators moved up to the panel with
maximization. One example of this problem would be the addition of a second
volume indicator if rhythmbox was maximized.

To get around these problems, I have come up with the following idea.

Applications could implement some standardized windicator options for their
windows. These could include: (This are listed in the fashion "Windicator
name (Statuses | Menu Options)")

   - Online status (Online, Offline, Connecting | Connect, Go offline)
   - Operation Progress (Working, perhaps showing a progressbar icon (ala
   battery icon) | a progressbar showing progress, cancel, pause/resume)
   - Volume (Volume level | Volume slider, Mute)
   - Security status (Secure, Insecure (locked/unlocked icons) | Lock,
   Unlock)
   - More (but these categories should be applicable to multiple
   applications)

If this is implemented, then all the windicators could have copies of them
already in the panel. For example, not only would rhythmbox have a volume
indicator on the window, its volume would be added to the sound menu, which
would display the system sound as well as application specific sound. Thus,
users could see what the status of individual, unmaximized windows is by
just looking at the window, without having to go to the panel, but if the
window takes up the whole screen (maximized) then going to the panel is
pretty much the same thing, so there would be no need for two areas of
indication.

Not only would this eliminate the need to move windicators to the panel when
maximizing windows, this would provide a centralized view of window statuses
in various areas. For example, if Bob wanted to check how his download was
going, instead of trying to find the download window, he could simply look
at the panel under the Operation Progress area, and see the download
progress listed underneath it.

This plan would significantly lower panel clutter as well as make the system
more tightly integrated, because it would consolidate window statuses in
panel applets.

One downside to this plan is that it limits possibilities for windicators,
but I feel that this is actually a good thing, because the user will know
what to expect from the top corner of a window, and applications couldn't
develop indicators which really aren't necessary to be indicated to the
user, or that don't apply to the whole window.

What do you think of this idea? Do you have any questions, comments?

Once again, sorry if this a duplicate
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Re: [Ayatana] Two suggested designs for the Sound Indicator

[Frederik Nnaji]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 09:35, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:

> Diego Moya wrote:
> > I like somebody's proposal of being able to drag the closed panel icon
> > left and right to change the slide without needing to open the menu
> > first.
>
> That would still make it inconsistent with all the other menus.
>

All options in the indicator menus are click-aim-release, except for the
volume slider.
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Re: [Ayatana] The Future of Nautilus

[David Hamm]

wow, they really went to town...
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Re: [Ayatana] What should be Gwibber's behavior when acessed from the messaging menu?

[Conscious User]

> A Twitter client is what I had in mind when I specified that the API
> should let applications attach a count to the application item itself
> (...)
> If there are multiple accounts, then it might show a separate item for
> each account:
> (...)
> It might also have separate items for @replies, direct messages, etc.

Nice! Is anyone involved in Gwibber development/integration
already aware of this vision?


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[Ayatana] The Future of Nautilus

[Frederik Nnaji]

It may be interesting to some readers of this ML to know what Nautilus is
going to incorporate for us in the future:
http://linuxart.com/log/archives/2010/06/20/the-future-of-nautilus/

greetings

Nnaji
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Re: [Ayatana] Me Menu - Review

[Frederik Nnaji]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 14:46, Mark Shuttleworth  wrote:

>  On 21/06/10 10:42, James Putt wrote:
>
> I agree colour is significant. I was considering that the top menu by
> convention is monochromatic with certain colours having a particular
> meaning, and how having different icons in the drop down menu to the icons
> representing the menu would play out.
>
>
> In order to avoid the panel going gaudy, and to *keep* colour significant,
> we should only use colour for "off-nominal and exceptional" situations.
>

yes one can indicate presence status without color, see here:
http://tango.freedesktop.org/Icon_Metaphors
yet the first thing is to replace the bubbles in the MeMenu with symbolic
icons that represent not solely chat.


> So we need to think carefully about whether being offline is an "alert"
> condition or not. I don't really think it is.
>

Online/offline status doesn't belong into the Me Menu.

The statuses the MeMenu wants to indicate, IIRC, are presence status and
sign-in status of social services, not online status.

Offline/Online belongs somewhere else.
Martin Owens registered a blueprint for this last year, you can find it
here:
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/lucid-online-status
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Re: [Ayatana] What should be Gwibber's behavior when acessed from the messaging menu?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Conscious User wrote on 08/06/10 20:28:
>...
> Gwibber 2.30 in Lucid adds user-specific entries to the
> Messaging Menu when a new broadcast is received. When
> you click on any of those entries, the Gwibber window
> simply pops up, and nothing specific to the broadcast
> whose indicator you clicked is done. Seems a little
> bit... underwhelming.
>...

A Twitter client is what I had in mind when I specified that the API
should let applications attach a count to the application item itself
(like the "GMail Notify" item shown in the
 wireframe), as an alternative to
having separate message sources.

So if you have only one account, the application needs only one item in
the menu:

|-|
|  () Pino   [14] |
|-|

If there are multiple accounts, then it might show a separate item for
each account:

|---|
|  () Pino  |
| mpt (Twitter)[14] |
| ubuntudesigners (Twitter)   [106] |
| ubuntudesigners (Identica)   [19] |
|---|

It might also have separate items for @replies, direct messages, etc.

- -- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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[Ayatana] Connecting with the weather-indicator project

[Jorge O. Castro]

Ayatana,

So this cycle for UNE we've been using indicator-datetime, which as
many people have noticed does not have support for weather like the
old panel applet did. This is for a few reasons, mostly because
weather isn't really a time and date thing and it doesn't really fit
as a system-indicator. Luckily two people have taken it upon
themselves to fix this problem (yay!) and have started a weather
indicator, as seen here:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/weather-indicator-applet-genesis-of.html

I've asked one of them on IRC (Cullen) to join the ayatana list and
I'm CCing Sebastian in the hopes of connecting them with the rest of
the Ubuntu community to see where they need help and what we can
collectively do to make this into something even better.

Code and all the goodies are here: https://launchpad.net/weather-indicator


-- 
Jorge Castro
jorge (at) ubuntu.com
External Project Developer Relations
Canonical Ltd.

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Re: [Ayatana] Windicators

[Sam Spilsbury]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 8:59 PM, Mark Shuttleworth  wrote:
> On 18/06/10 19:42, Sam Spilsbury wrote:
>> Do you need to interact with them during alt-tab? Remember that your
>> screen is grabbed and you are busy finding windows, not tweaking them.
>
> I think, if we're going to expose them, we should enable them to be
> interactive in order to keep them faithful to the original and consistent.
>
>> In that case, I'd say scale them down accordingly. Not only will this
>> fit in better more visually, but it also makes a heck of a lot of
>> sense when we get input redirection and can interact with those tiny
>> widgets anyways*
>>
>
> They'd be tiny, and not very easy to interact with scaled down. It's a
> neat idea, but I think violating the scaling is actually useful in this
> case.
>
> Mark
>
>

I have been running my own builds of X11 with input redirection for
about a year now, since your display would become largely resolution
independent anyways and you can just zoom in to get more precision on
those little widgets.

Kind Regards,

Sam



-- 
Sam Spilsbury

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Re: [Ayatana] Start Menu Concept

[David Hamm]

One of the best parts of labels is that they help separate groups of items,
which the different background color, icon size's and text color try to do.
So in this case labels would only help to identify the group at large to
which the folder icons I feel already do a sufficient job. I would also like
to think the "places" could be swapped out with shortcuts to programs.
Example > Pictures > Shotwell. So labeling might limit what the side plane
could become. On a brighter note if labeling were added i'm sure it be a
simple fix to hide or show/theme based on preference.
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Re: [Ayatana] mail indicator not consistency

[Mark Shuttleworth]

On 18/06/10 13:18, Frederik Nnaji wrote:
> On 2010-06-18, Vishnoo  wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, 2010-03-31 at 23:34 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
>> 
>>> On 31/03/10 18:51, Jim Rorie wrote:
>>>   
 From a bigger picture frame of reference, I was mulling a global "do
 no disturb" state. This would turn off desktop notifications and other
 intrusions.
 
>>> Do-Not-Disturb should *definitely* be in the spec for 10.10. Please do
>>> review them post-UDS and raise a flag if it's not there.
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>   
>> I'v tried to find a blueprint which schedules the D-n-D for maverick.
>> But there isnt any. Seems like it is not in the spec for 10.10.
>>
>> So... reminding ;)
>>
>> --
>> Cheers,
>> 
> thx vish for digging this up, exactly what i asked for..
> it stands in direct relation to the "HCI subsystem" thingy i was
> trying to propose in the unclutter thread.
>   

Do-not-disturb did come up in our latest review of thinking for 11.04
design work, so please ask MPT for a pointer to the (placeholder) spec
where it should emerge. I would guess it would be a me-menu-2.0 type
spec name.

Mark



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Re: [Ayatana] Windicators

[Mark Shuttleworth]

On 18/06/10 19:42, Sam Spilsbury wrote:
> Do you need to interact with them during alt-tab? Remember that your
> screen is grabbed and you are busy finding windows, not tweaking them.

I think, if we're going to expose them, we should enable them to be
interactive in order to keep them faithful to the original and consistent.

> In that case, I'd say scale them down accordingly. Not only will this
> fit in better more visually, but it also makes a heck of a lot of
> sense when we get input redirection and can interact with those tiny
> widgets anyways*
>   

They'd be tiny, and not very easy to interact with scaled down. It's a
neat idea, but I think violating the scaling is actually useful in this
case.

Mark



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Re: [Ayatana] Me Menu - Review

[Mark Shuttleworth]

On 21/06/10 10:42, James Putt wrote:
> I agree colour is significant. I was considering that the top menu by
> convention is monochromatic with certain colours having a particular
> meaning, and how having different icons in the drop down menu to the
> icons representing the menu would play out.

In order to avoid the panel going gaudy, and to *keep* colour
significant, we should only use colour for "off-nominal and exceptional"
situations. So we need to think carefully about whether being offline is
an "alert" condition or not. I don't really think it is.

Mark


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Re: [Ayatana] Two suggested designs for the Sound Indicator

[Mark Shuttleworth]

On 21/06/10 15:04, Frederik Nnaji wrote:
> What GlobalMenu does, is to detect what the user is currently looking
> at, then afford the respective controls for its manipulation.
> The Sound Menu can also behave like this:
> * Probe for focused media apps
> * assign the most accessible volume fader to the currently focused
> media app's output signal
> * volume manipulation without media app window focused affects global
> volume.

It's an interesting idea. But remember, the "inverse" use case is just
as urgent when you need it, and you need it often. By "inverse" I meant
that you suddenly want to control the volume of the thing you are NOT
looking at.

For example, you get a skype call, skype is focused, and you now want to
lower the volume on the youtube video that was playing when the call
came in.

Or you have music playing, and someone sends you a youtube link, and you
want to lower the volume of the song playing on in the background.ADD
METERS!

> Digital audio hardware often uses so called LED Meterbridges for this
> kind of purpose.. That's what we need first, IMO: sound, visually
> represented.

Yes, we could do this, with a custom slider, and it's not a bad idea for
2.0.

Mark



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Re: [Ayatana] Yet another discussion on window resizing - where does the problem lie?

[Philipp Wendler]

Hello,

Am 23.06.2010 09:20, schrieb Vishnoo:


I'v never found the need to resize firefox&  evolution [always
maximized] or the various prefs dialogue windows[which have the right
size].


Don't forget that there are users that do not always maximize their 
windows. This will be even more common in the future, because it doesn't 
make sense to maximize firefox etc. on a 24" screen. The only 
application I ever maximize on such a screen is Eclipse.



Rarely resize certain windows - eg: nautilus,xchat,liferea,terminal.
These remember the last size I had set them to and they open in the same
size[seems to be the case with almost every application in the default
install]. Which I rarely adjust more than once. The most common action I
do with them is maximize.


I often resize terminals, editors and evince and arrange them so that I 
can view all of them, for example when looking at a manual or a paper, 
doing something on the command line and writing some text about it.


So window resizing is IMHO an important action, and I think it's a 
little bit too difficult to grab the resize handle in Lucid.


Greetings, Philipp

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Re: [Ayatana] Two suggested designs for the Sound Indicator

[Frederik Nnaji]

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 12:50, Diego Moya  wrote:

> On 22 June 2010 12:31, Diego Moya wrote:
> > What I suggested is having volume
> > sliders in each application*
>
> * for multimedia applications that include media-player controls, that is.
>

i think the criterium should be whether or not the respective app produces
an audio stream or not.
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Re: [Ayatana] Start Menu Concept

[Jarlath Reidy]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 2:18 AM, David Hamm  wrote:

> I'll match your quote, "This is what I imagine purgatory to be. A vortex of
> eternal clicking."
>
> with a quote, "imo, id have just applications and recent with a side arrow
> to expand either, knocking out the places when expanded."
>

Expansion could be good. Detecting when the mouse is near the menu edge and
adding more offerings. For speedy usage, I usually like those kind of things
to be mundane and predictable though.

>
> so in essence it would by default look like the windows start menu, with a
> (new recent tab), and an expand tab like gshell. There is no way to show all
> applications without a scroll bar, or more then one click...
>

Gnome is doing it at the moment. One click to launch the menu, and one more
to choose the program. You can even scroll large menus just by putting your
mouse arrow at the bottom of the list. You can try this by reducing your
monitor resolution  to say 800x600 and using the System->Preferences menu.


> thanks for reading guys
>
Thanks for the creative idea. I was also thinking that if the "Devices" and
"Places" in your mockup were labelled, like they are now in Gnome, it would
look more organized. What do you think?
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Re: [Ayatana] Yet another discussion on window resizing - where does the problem lie?

[Vishnoo]

On Tue, 2010-06-22 at 09:33 -0700, Dylan McCall wrote:
> And now, I'll bring your attention back to everyone's favourite bug,
> lp:160311 (“Resizing windows by grabbing window borders is
> difficult”).
> https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/160311

While this is a wildly debated bug, I wonder where the real problem
lies...

- Why does one want to resize a window? rather, why should it be
resized?
- How often is the window requiring a resize?
- What are the applications which cause this problem?
- Is this an application or a window manager or a theme problem ?

I'v never found the need to resize firefox & evolution [always
maximized] or the various prefs dialogue windows[which have the right
size].

Rarely resize certain windows - eg: nautilus,xchat,liferea,terminal.
These remember the last size I had set them to and they open in the same
size[seems to be the case with almost every application in the default
install]. Which I rarely adjust more than once. The most common action I
do with them is maximize.

Very often need to resize Inkscape,GIMP windows which is mostly to
zoom-in to see more of the content. [Inkscape does remember the window
size for each image separately, but often opens up to an odd default
size]

Now again, why are people resizing windows? Shouldnt it be fixed in the
applications to show the content without requiring a resize?

-- 
Cheers,
Vish


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Re: [Ayatana] Yet another discussion on window resizing

[Tyler Brainerd]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 12:04 AM, David Callé  wrote:

>
> > Perhaps we could improve on one of these methods and make it more
> > obvious to users.
> >
>
> I might be wrong but I think that a command involving using the mouse
> and the keyboard at the same time will never be obvious to users.
>
> David Callé
>
> Agreed. Given the expected behavior of how to resize a window, a key/mouse
combo is not a solution. just sit someone, anyone, down and ask them to
resize the window anyway but dragging the edge or corner and they'll just
sit in confusion. i know, i just tried with my dad.



>
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Re: [Ayatana] Yet another discussion on window resizing

[David Callé]

> Perhaps we could improve on one of these methods and make it more
> obvious to users.
> 

I might be wrong but I think that a command involving using the mouse
and the keyboard at the same time will never be obvious to users.

David Callé


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