Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2011-04-21 22:49, Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:
> On 2011-04-08 08:52, Martin Pitt wrote:
>> Rick Spencer [2011-04-07 18:38 -0700]:
>>> 1. There are key feature regressions, for example, there is no
>>> systray support for many important applications.
>> ...
>> If this is a major issue, then frankly I'd rather just remove
>> the whitelist and allow all old-style systray applications than
>> dropping Unity by default completely.
> 
> ... I'd vote for dropping the whitelist whether the issue is major or
> not. Personally I have noticed that mail-notification is broken in
> Unity, which is enough of a reason for me to keep using Classic for
> now when not needing Unity for developing tests.

Spotify for Linux is another example of a client whose systray icon does
not show up in Unity. Spotify is an important service to many users in
several European countries, so solving this issue - preferably by
dropping the whitelist - should be given high priority IMO.

First I thought that the lack of support for the Spotify systray icon is
causing this problem:
http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/spotify_for_linux_freezes_in_ubuntu_natty

The client freezes in Ubuntu Classic too, though, which indicates that
the problems are unrelated.

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Ted Gould]

On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 13:52 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 11:17:32AM -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
> > On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 13:16 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > > On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 12:41:22PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 02:17:47PM -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
> > > I don't think we should do this unless we also have the manpower
> > > resources identified to bring apps up to meet the standards.  There are
> > > a lot of otherwise good, powerful applications which simply haven't kept
> > > up with the latest GUI technologies, and it would be shooting ourselves
> > > in the foot to simply drop them.
> > 
> > Well, I don't think we'll ever have the manpower to change all of Open
> > Source for any particular vision.  I'd love that, but I think the
> > expectation is unreasonable.
> 
> Yes, I completely agree there.  Thus I think the tactic of dropping
> applications that don't change to meet our requirements would simply be
> detrimental to our own goals.  In a way it's sort of a blackmailing
> strategy -- do something or else we'll do something to diminish your
> project.  It might work in a few cases, but it's also going to piss
> others off who may choose to do differently just for orneriness, and
> there's going to be a huge number of projects that just won't care one
> way or the other.  I think in the end we'd find ourselves in a difficult
> position of having to either drop a lot of software from the archive
> that we'd actually prefer keeping, or break with the policies.

I think that it depends on how the requirements are seen.  If they're
seen as onerous or arbitrary there'll be rebellion.  If they're seen as
really making the Free Software world better, there'll be general
support.  For sure we should be prepared to remove projects we love if
they don't meet requirements -- it's hard, but necessary.  We shouldn't
start (or really ever) have requirements that'd "drop a lot of software"
from the archive.  It's more about consistently good rather than empty.

> > > If the goal here is to motivate projects to implement particular
> > > technologies that we want to see more consistent across applications,
> > > there are way more effective tactics to employ for that...
> > 
> > Like? :-)
> 
> I'm glad you asked.  :-)

I should have expected that.  :-)

> * Visibility in USC.  Like the blackmail approach but we're using a
>   carrot instead of a stick.  Apps that don't meet the requirement will
>   still be available via apt, but won't be findable through USC.  (Or
>   maybe a checkbox buried deep in a menu allows for non-compliant
>   software.)  Or it could be a factor in determining "Preferred" apps.

+1, perhaps even we could use this for future requirements.  For
instance, you have to have a man page in two releases, but now we're
just going to remove you from USC.

> * Barn raising.  Like a cross between BugDays and Ubuntu Developer Week,
>   you'd arrange a week where each day you'd have a session to discuss
>   and explain one of the requirements, and encourage community people to
>   engage in implementing that functionality for various applications.
>   You build a list of suggested apps to work on, and let people sign up
>   for one to work on (individually or small teams).  Show them how to
>   submit patches to the regular sponsoring process, give some tips or
>   help forwarding the patches upstream.  Look at how well received the
>   PaperCuts project has been; here we're using basically the same
>   approach.

+1, I think that this should be used to help projects meet the
requirements.  It doesn't preclude them existing though.  We should be
helpful, but stern.

> * Publish a Ubuntu Human Interface Guideline.  You'll remember in
>   Inkscape early on we paid a lot of attention to HIG compliance even
>   though we weren't even a GNOME project.  Having that guideline
>   available for reference settled a lot of arguments.  Make it well
>   written, well thought out, and backed by design and usability experts
>   and testing, and I should think it would sell itself, no need for
>   carrots or sticks at all.

While some of these are not about HIG type stuff though, I think that
everything we're asking should be well documented with rationale.

> * Split the archive.  Instead of Main/Universe, you'd have
>   Main/Galaxy/Universe, where Galaxy is the subset of universe that
>   meets the new Ubuntu policies.  Universe still exists for those who
>   really need it, but most people would be encouraged to stay within
>   just Galaxy.

Isn't Galaxy here effectively the Debian archive?  Why duplicate?

> * Roadmap it.  Create a list of all the apps you want to support the set
>   of requirements.  Prioritize and organize them into a sequence of
>   steps, easiest/most-important first, and hardest/least-important
>   later.  Don't attach any due dates, but imply that achieving one phase
>   per Ubuntu release would be desirable.  Then, start from

Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2011-04-08 08:52, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Rick Spencer [2011-04-07 18:38 -0700]:
>> 1. There are key feature regressions, for example, there is no systray
>> support for many important applications.
> ...
> If this is a major issue, then frankly I'd rather just remove the
> whitelist and allow all old-style systray applications than dropping
> Unity by default completely.

Totally unaware of the preceding considerations, I'm a little puzzled by
this discussion. Based on what I have read in this thread, I'd vote for
dropping the whitelist whether the issue is major or not. Personally I
have noticed that mail-notification is broken in Unity, which is enough
of a reason for me to keep using Classic for now when not needing Unity
for developing tests.

If the feature can be provided, without a price in the form of e.g.
extra maintenance time, is there a good reason for disabling it? Closing
the door prematurely on the users and developers concerned seems not
right to me.

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Serge Hallyn]

Quoting Luke Faraone (l...@faraone.cc):
> Besides alienating developers ("Ubuntu is making me do what?"), it'll
> cause user frustration as apps which used to work in 10.10 and previous
> will fail in 11.04. I don't have numbers, but I'd expect most of the
> GtkStatusIcon-using universe has not been ported, nor will there be
> immediate upstream interest in doing so.
> 
> Unless we have a very good reason (which so far has yet to be presented,
> beyond "its better UX"), we should maintain support for applications
> using the (still supported in Gtk2!) API.

Just to be clear, I'm not even talking at that level.  I'd prefer to
continue supporting them, but not supporting them in unity isn't
so bad.  Users can work around that.  Or use another wm.  (Maybe it
just doesn't bother me bc I never much liked apps requiring the
panel, since I preferred dwm/wmii)

It's telling application writers that they are doing the wrong thing
and that they won't be packaged in Ubuntu that I was referring to.

-serge

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, April 21, 2011 12:04:31 PM Clint Byrum wrote:
...
> I don't think its all that arrogant to say "these screw up the UX,
> so we have disabled them. We're here to help you get that fixed."
...

Except that's not what we're saying.  We're saying these screw up Ubuntu (and 
here I do mean Ubuntu the desktop, not the entire project as at least some 
other Ubuntu flavors work fine) UX because we don't support broader standards, 
we have our own.

I think that's exactly arrogant.  

The only solution that's viable in the long run is to make it so this 
functionality is not Ubuntu specific.  There are parts of what make up 
appindicators that are not controversial.  One of the things that I learned 
from the extensive recent public discussions on this topic re Gnome upstream 
and Ubuntu is that apparently the basic new systray protocol originally 
developed by KDE that's used as a base for the appindicator work is non-
controversial in Gnome, just lacking someone to do the work.

That isn't all that's needed to get to appindicators, but it's a start.  So my 
suggestion would be to pour some of the effort that is going into patching 
however many gtk/gnome apps there are that use the notification area into 
starting to get this work upstream instead.

AIUI Gnome 3.0 is released now, so it's not a bad time to focus on this.

Scott K

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from Luke Faraone's message of Thu Apr 21 07:51:55 -0700 2011:
> Unless we have a very good reason (which so far has yet to be presented,
> beyond "its better UX"), we should maintain support for applications
> using the (still supported in Gtk2!) API.
> 

Does anybody actually *like* status icons?

I *despise* them. The fact that there are less on my natty desktop is
something that has made me very happy. I put up with Skype's icon and
proprietary ways because their service and app are amazing. If we missed
any other amazing apps for whitelist, thats a worthy SRU I think.

Do we have specific application examples that are broken now? Have any
of us tried to make a patch to stuff them into an existing indicator if
available, and sent it upstream? How hard is this process?

I don't think its all that arrogant to say "these screw up the UX,
so we have disabled them. We're here to help you get that fixed."

How about an apport hook during oneiric alpha to file a bug if an
un-whitelisted program tries to use GtkStatusIcon? Rather than silently
failing, it can say "Your program tried to fill your top bar with annoying
blinkenlights, do you want to file a bug about that?"

I agree that the position we're in now does not win us a ton of friends
in the FOSS world. However, we've consistently won the hearts and minds
of users because of UX centric decisions. As the form factors and user
expectations change and evolve, I think its ok to say "we're going this
direction, we want you here too but we can't wait forever!"

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Martin Owens]

On Thu, 2011-04-21 at 10:51 -0400, Luke Faraone wrote:
> nor will there be
> immediate upstream interest in doing so. 

Standards, standards, standards ;-)

We have all sorts of problems now because Gnome project sets the
standards for Ubuntu (or what should work in Ubuntu). It becomes
apparent that we will more clearly have to specify that our platform
here is not Gnome but something else. So if you have a Gnome app it'll
mostly work, but if you have an Ubuntu app, it'll work perfectly.

Martin,


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[George Farris]

On Thu, 2011-04-21 at 10:51 -0400, Luke Faraone wrote:
> On 04/21/2011 09:48 AM, Serge Hallyn wrote:
> > I'm sorry, I just don't understand this theme in this thread.  The one
> > about Linux application developers should be gearing their apps toward
> > Ubuntu I don't think it's reasonable - at least not with some of the
> > items on the original list.  It's one thing for Gnome to do so, because
> > their mission is different.  For a distro, I think it's self-defeating.
> > …
> > Mind you I don't care to argue here.  I'm just saying I'm worried about
> > the fact that everyone seems behind this, and that this attitude will be
> > detrimental to Ubuntu's standing in the community.  Really detrimental.
> 
> +1. If we're planning on *breaking* established APIs we have supported
> in the past, it should be because its unmaintainable (like Gtk1) or has
> been deprecated for a very long time. GtkStatusIcon is neither.
> 

Well said. +1 as well.  There is no need for me to add to it other than
express my support.

Cheers
George





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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Luke Faraone]

On 04/21/2011 09:48 AM, Serge Hallyn wrote:
> I'm sorry, I just don't understand this theme in this thread.  The one
> about Linux application developers should be gearing their apps toward
> Ubuntu I don't think it's reasonable - at least not with some of the
> items on the original list.  It's one thing for Gnome to do so, because
> their mission is different.  For a distro, I think it's self-defeating.
> …
> Mind you I don't care to argue here.  I'm just saying I'm worried about
> the fact that everyone seems behind this, and that this attitude will be
> detrimental to Ubuntu's standing in the community.  Really detrimental.

+1. If we're planning on *breaking* established APIs we have supported
in the past, it should be because its unmaintainable (like Gtk1) or has
been deprecated for a very long time. GtkStatusIcon is neither.

It seems rather arrogant to say "well, we're implementing something
shiny and new, and if you don't migrate to a new API your app will be
broken for many usecases".

Besides alienating developers ("Ubuntu is making me do what?"), it'll
cause user frustration as apps which used to work in 10.10 and previous
will fail in 11.04. I don't have numbers, but I'd expect most of the
GtkStatusIcon-using universe has not been ported, nor will there be
immediate upstream interest in doing so.

Unless we have a very good reason (which so far has yet to be presented,
beyond "its better UX"), we should maintain support for applications
using the (still supported in Gtk2!) API.

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Serge Hallyn]

Quoting Matthew Paul Thomas (m...@canonical.com):
> The concession for Java and Wine is because, unlike Linux application
> developers, Java and Windows application developers can't reasonably be
> expected to know or care about Ubuntu at all.

I'm sorry, I just don't understand this theme in this thread.  The one
about Linux application developers should be gearing their apps toward
Ubuntu I don't think it's reasonable - at least not with some of the
items on the original list.  It's one thing for Gnome to do so, because
their mission is different.  For a distro, I think it's self-defeating.

If I were out there coding some app, and someone came to me and said
"your application isn't going to be in opensuse unless you drop support
for appindicators and use (some other thing) instead", I'd laugh at
them.  This is open source.  I code it for myself first, and share it
with you.  If you provide a generic API which will let my app do both, I
may or may not decide to use it (probably not - time is scarce).  But
to just say I need to use your own API would be unfathomably presumptuous.

Mind you I don't care to argue here.  I'm just saying I'm worried about
the fact that everyone seems behind this, and that this attitude will be
detrimental to Ubuntu's standing in the community.  Really detrimental.

-serge

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Scott Kitterman]

...
On Thursday, April 21, 2011 05:47:29 AM Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Regardless of how good or bad that process was, it is not reasonable to
> then say that Ubuntu application developers "have every right to use"
> everything that's "adopted upstream in GNOME/GTK". That would mean
> Ubuntu's APIs should be beholden to whatever Gnome Shell does or does
> not need. And that way lies madness.
> 
> >> I doubt it's supportable to deal with Ubuntu patches for all the
> >> relevant Universe packages.
> > 
> > Right, but that's not even everything. We are encouraging app
> > developers to build software for Ubuntu using Gtk or Qt,
> 
> There's a good example. Qt includes a Qt::Drawer window type, for use in
> Mac applications. Does that mean Compiz in Ubuntu should implement
> drawers? Of course not. It might be suitable for Mac applications, but
> it isn't suitable for Ubuntu applications. In the same way,
> GtkStatusIcon might be suitable for Windows applications, but it isn't
> suitable for Ubuntu applications.
...

That example is only relevant if you think Ubuntu is a separate platform from 
the rest of the Linux world.  That way lies madness.  

Scott K

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Martin Pitt]

Matthew Paul Thomas [2011-04-21 10:47 +0100]:
> Regardless of how good or bad that process was, it is not reasonable to
> *then* say that Ubuntu application developers "have every right to use"
> everything that's "adopted upstream in GNOME/GTK". That would mean
> Ubuntu's APIs should be beholden to whatever Gnome Shell does or does
> not need.

TBH I have some difficulty parsing this, but I wasn't actually
speaking about the indicator part. Of course we, and app developers,
can and should use the API, as it provides a better and more
consistent user interface.

What I meant is that GtkStatusIcon is an official GTK API still, and
as long as it is I don't think it's beneficial or polite to
deliberately break this, as it currently causes so many broken
applications.

> There's a good example. Qt includes a Qt::Drawer window type, for use in
> Mac applications. Does that mean Compiz in Ubuntu should implement
> drawers? Of course not. It might be suitable for Mac applications, but
> it isn't suitable for Ubuntu applications. In the same way,
> GtkStatusIcon might be suitable for Windows applications, but it isn't
> suitable for Ubuntu applications.

GtkStatusIcon has been suitable and working for Ubuntu applications
for many years, while Qt::Drawer never was.

> The concession for Skype is because Skype is proprietary (so we can't
> fix it ourselves) and develops very slowly.

The "develops slowly" and "can't fix ourselves" is also true for a lot
of universe/third party free software packages.

But I guess at this point we just need to agree to disagree about
this.

Thanks, and happy Easter holidays,

Martin
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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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Martin Pitt wrote on 14/04/11 14:54:
>...
> To the contrary. GtkStatusIcon is an official API from GTK, so people
> have every right to use it; we can hardly claim that it's a bug
> (although we have good reason to not recommend using it, of course).
> As I now kept saying for many times, as long as we don't get the
> indicator concept adopted upstream in GNOME/GTK (e. g. dropping the
> GtkStatusIcon in GTK 4), I don't see us having a good rationale for
> completely disabling them.

As you may know, one of the reasons libappindicator wasn't accepted into
Gnome was that "it doesn't integrate with gnome-shell".


Regardless of how good or bad that process was, it is not reasonable to
*then* say that Ubuntu application developers "have every right to use"
everything that's "adopted upstream in GNOME/GTK". That would mean
Ubuntu's APIs should be beholden to whatever Gnome Shell does or does
not need. And that way lies madness.

>> I doubt it's supportable to deal with Ubuntu patches for all the
>> relevant Universe packages.
> 
> Right, but that's not even everything. We are encouraging app
> developers to build software for Ubuntu using Gtk or Qt,

There's a good example. Qt includes a Qt::Drawer window type, for use in
Mac applications. Does that mean Compiz in Ubuntu should implement
drawers? Of course not. It might be suitable for Mac applications, but
it isn't suitable for Ubuntu applications. In the same way,
GtkStatusIcon might be suitable for Windows applications, but it isn't
suitable for Ubuntu applications.

>  and there's a
> lot of third-party software which should also work well on Ubuntu as
> well. Why did we make a concession for Skype and Java, but not for
> others?
>...

The concession for Skype is because Skype is proprietary (so we can't
fix it ourselves) and develops very slowly. I hope to meet with Skype
designers soon and discuss using an application indicator.

The concession for Java and Wine is because, unlike Linux application
developers, Java and Windows application developers can't reasonably be
expected to know or care about Ubuntu at all.

There is no bright line for what we should have included in the
whitelist or not. But the whitelist will shrink over time.

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Jorge O. Castro]

On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Evan Martin  wrote:
> (Chrome shows a systray icon when it has gone into "background" mode:
> no visible windows, but still running.  This allows extensions and
> apps to work in an "offline" fashion; e.g. a mail notifier can tell
> you you have new mail, and clicking would bring up a browser window.)

Application indicator documentation is here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopExperienceTeam/ApplicationIndicators

There's a fallback there so that if libappindicator isn't running your
app can just use the notification area.

> PS: I would love it if you published some guidelines about how to port
> apps to Unity.  Maybe these exist?  I haven't looked around too hard.

http://developer.ubuntu.com is finally starting to come together,
we're hoping this will be the one stop shop for upstream app
developers.

http://developer.ubuntu.com/api/ is probably the most interesting to you.

We also have a contact us page for any application developer that
needs a direct line to an engineer if they need help:
http://unity.ubuntu.com/contact-us/


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Evan Martin]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 6:38 PM, Rick Spencer  wrote:
> 1. There are key feature regressions, for example, there is no systray
> support for many important applications.

As an application developer that tries to do our best to stay atop the
constantly-shifting platform (:P), what is the recommendation for what
to do about this?

(Chrome shows a systray icon when it has gone into "background" mode:
no visible windows, but still running.  This allows extensions and
apps to work in an "offline" fashion; e.g. a mail notifier can tell
you you have new mail, and clicking would bring up a browser window.)

PS: I would love it if you published some guidelines about how to port
apps to Unity.  Maybe these exist?  I haven't looked around too hard.
We don't have quite the resources to track what everyone's doing these
days so we mostly learn about problems after users start telling us
everything is broken in that we don't follow the new rules of e.g.
Gnome 3.  (Most Chrome devs use tiling window managers; I personally
switched to a vanilla Ubuntu install in an attempt to stay on top of
breakage for at least one platform...)

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Martin Pool]

One consideration about the applet whitelist: at the moment the Unity
Launcher invites you to install applcations like radiotray, whose only
UI is an applet icon.  (I think this is not the only example.)  This
is leading the user up a blind alley.

In this case there is upstream work to support appindicators, which is
great, but it requires manual xml editing and it's not in Natty
yet.[1]

It seems like these each need to be either
 * fixed before release
 * whitelisted
 * not recommended if you're running Unity

radiotray is not all that important of an application, but just having
nothing happen is icky.

[1] 
http://askubuntu.com/questions/35141/radio-tray-icon-applet-not-working-in-unity

Martin

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Jono Bacon wrote on 16/04/11 20:05:
>
> On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 03:00 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>...
>> Last week, Charline Poirier ran a user test of Unity, with 11
>> individual participants. This week, I have helped Charline analyze the
>> results.
>...
> Wonderful work, and now very visible work:
> http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/04/16/0239213/5-Out-of-11-Crashed-Unity-In-Canonicals-Study
>  ;-)

Up to Slashdot's usual standards, I see.

To correct the obvious from that post:

*   No, "the results" of the study have not been published. Charline
will do that soon.

*   No, my name is not Rick Spencer. (rickspencer4?)

*   The object of the study was, obviously, not to measure crashes.
Crashes are usually quick to find and fix, so any user test of those
would be weeks out of date when published. I mentioned them only as
a reminder that to users, bugs are indistinguishable from design
flaws, and vice versa. (For example, one test participant pressed
Ctrl Alt F1 apparently by accident, and ended up at a console. This
wasn't a crash, but it had exactly the same effect as one.)

> I think this feedback points to a series of design and engineering bugs
> that we need to resolve in 11.10. Have the design bugs been filed in
> Launchpad?

Charline has been working with John Lea on that today.

> I think it could be worthwhile to rate the prioritization of the design
> bugs based upon the level of success in your study. As an example, if
> 1/12 achieved a task, it would be a high priority bug, as opposed to if
> 10/12 achieved the task it would be a low priority bug.
>...

I'll pass that on to John.

Cheers
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Re: Missing panel items (was Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results)

[Alin-Andrei]

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 17:03, Barry Warsaw  wrote:

>>>* The weather notifier is missing.  I really like this little notifier so
I
>>>know when to throw open the windows and get some fresh air!
>>
>>Install the "indicator-weather" package - it's in the official Natty repos
>>(universe).
>
>Thanks, done.  Now what?  I don't know how to add indicators to the Unity
top
>panel.  System settings has nothing appropriate, and right-clicking on the
>panel does nothing.

> Please note, I'm deliberately trying to wear a newbie hat.


Just search for "weather" in Dash... it should show up and click in will
automatically add Weather Indicator to the panel. I guess that for a newbie
it's easier then before as you launch it from the menu and you don't have to
right click the panel to add it. But not for one who has used an older
Ubuntu version of course... for such a newbie I can see how that's
confusing.


>>>* System monitor.  I like this little applet because it gives me a quick
>>>way
>>>to take the pulse of my system.   How hard it's running, is there a lot
of
>>>network activity going on, etc.
>>>
>>>For the CPU and memory usage you can use System Monitor Indicator [1]

>>>* Force quit.  Some times you just need it and a kill -9 just isn't easy
to
>>>get to.
>>
>>There's no appindicator for this, but you can create a .desktop file (just
>>copy any from /usr/share/applications/ on your desktop and edit it as a
>>template), and under "Exec" enter "xkill", then drag and drop this
.desktop
>>file to the Unity launcher. Then to force an application to close, click
>>this icon, then click the window you want to close.
>>
>>I hope this helps :)

>It does, and thanks.  But do understand that from a non-technical user's
>perspective, these are regressions from the classic desktop, both in
missing
>features and the ability to add them to the top panel.

I'm just a simple user and I though I'd help so you don't need to convince
me but the developers :)



-Andrew
http://www.webupd8.org
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Re: Missing panel items (was Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results)

[Stefano Rivera]

Hi Alin-Andrei (2011.04.18_15:11:29_+0200)
> For the CPU and memory usage you can use System Monitor Indicator [1]

Thanks, I'll look at that. I'd considered writing something similar, but
appindicators are supposed to be simple mono-colour icons rather than
graphs, so I waited to see what else would appear :)

In reply to Dustin:
> Shameless plug here, but Byobu supports monitoring everything
> system-monitor does

Yeah I spend a fair amount of my time in terminals, but mostly connected
over ssh to remote screens. screen-in-screen gets a bit much :P

SR

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Re: Missing panel items (was Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results)

[Alin-Andrei]

Hello,

>* The weather notifier is missing.  I really like this little notifier so I
>know when to throw open the windows and get some fresh air!

Install the "indicator-weather" package - it's in the official Natty repos
(universe).

>* System monitor.  I like this little applet because it gives me a quick
way
>to take the pulse of my system.   How hard it's running, is there a lot of
>network activity going on, etc.

For the CPU and memory usage you can use System Monitor Indicator [1]

>* Force quit.  Some times you just need it and a kill -9 just isn't easy to
>get to.

There's no appindicator for this, but you can create a .desktop file (just
copy any from /usr/share/applications/ on your desktop and edit it as a
template), and under "Exec" enter "xkill", then drag and drop this .desktop
file to the Unity launcher. Then to force an application to close, click
this icon, then click the window you want to close.


I hope this helps :)



[1]
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/03/system-monitor-indicator-puts-cpu-and.html


-Andrew


On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 16:02, Barry Warsaw  wrote:

> Now that I'm using Unity a lot, I find that I'm missing a few things from
> the
> classic desktop's upper panel.  I don't know how to get these back, if it's
> even possible.
>
> * The weather notifier is missing.  I really like this little notifier so I
>  know when to throw open the windows and get some fresh air!
>
> * System monitor.  I like this little applet because it gives me a quick
> way
>  to take the pulse of my system.   How hard it's running, is there a lot of
>  network activity going on, etc.
>
> * Force quit.  Some times you just need it and a kill -9 just isn't easy to
>  get to.
>
> Cheers,
> -Barry
>
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Re: Missing panel items (was Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results)

[Martín Soto]

Hi Barry,

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 3:02 PM, Barry Warsaw  wrote:

> Now that I'm using Unity a lot, I find that I'm missing a few things from
> the
> classic desktop's upper panel.  I don't know how to get these back, if it's
> even possible.
>
> * The weather notifier is missing.  I really like this little notifier so I
>  know when to throw open the windows and get some fresh air!
>

You can install package 'indicator-weather' from natty (I'm citing the name
from memory, as I don't have a natty install in front of me right now, but
I'm pretty sure it's right) . The new indicator isn't yet perfect, but I
thing it's shaping up very nicely.

Cheers,

Martín
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Re: Missing panel items (was Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results)

[Dustin Kirkland]

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Stefano Rivera  wrote:
> Hi Barry (2011.04.18_15:02:06_+0200)
>> * The weather notifier is missing.  I really like this little notifier so I
>>   know when to throw open the windows and get some fresh air!
>
> Having a configurable date format would also be really nice.
>
>> * System monitor.  I like this little applet because it gives me a quick way
>>   to take the pulse of my system.   How hard it's running, is there a lot of
>>   network activity going on, etc.
>
> Really really miss that. My laptop's fan volume is a poor substitute for
> system-monitor. I feel blind without it.

Shameless plug here, but Byobu supports monitoring everything
system-monitor does (processor, memory, network, swap, load, disk),
and many, many more (like Stefano's fan speed).  For those that spend
most of their time in a terminal, it might temporarily fill this gap
until hopefully these land in Unity one day.

I don't know if you're a user, Barry, if you file a bug against byobu
for a weather status notification, I'll get that working too!

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Ubuntu Core Developer

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Re: Missing panel items (was Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results)

[Barry Warsaw]

On Apr 18, 2011, at 04:11 PM, Alin-Andrei wrote:

>>* The weather notifier is missing.  I really like this little notifier so I
>>know when to throw open the windows and get some fresh air!
>
>Install the "indicator-weather" package - it's in the official Natty repos
>(universe).

Thanks, done.  Now what?  I don't know how to add indicators to the Unity top
panel.  System settings has nothing appropriate, and right-clicking on the
panel does nothing.

Please note, I'm deliberately trying to wear a newbie hat.

>>* System monitor.  I like this little applet because it gives me a quick
>way
>>to take the pulse of my system.   How hard it's running, is there a lot of
>>network activity going on, etc.
>
>For the CPU and memory usage you can use System Monitor Indicator [1]

>>* Force quit.  Some times you just need it and a kill -9 just isn't easy to
>>get to.
>
>There's no appindicator for this, but you can create a .desktop file (just
>copy any from /usr/share/applications/ on your desktop and edit it as a
>template), and under "Exec" enter "xkill", then drag and drop this .desktop
>file to the Unity launcher. Then to force an application to close, click
>this icon, then click the window you want to close.
>
>I hope this helps :)

It does, and thanks.  But do understand that from a non-technical user's
perspective, these are regressions from the classic desktop, both in missing
features and the ability to add them to the top panel.

-Barry


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Re: Missing panel items (was Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results)

[Barry Warsaw]

On Apr 18, 2011, at 03:12 PM, Stefano Rivera wrote:

>Hi Barry (2011.04.18_15:02:06_+0200)
>> * Force quit.  Some times you just need it and a kill -9 just isn't easy to
>>   get to.
>
>The force quit dialog that pops up a few seconds after you've tried to
>close a non-responsive window usually does the trick for me.

Hi Stefano.  Agreed this usually works but there are some windows which are
simply not responsive to clicking the X button, or ctrl-W or ctrl-Q, etc.
(Which are separate bugs I suppose, but still ;).

-Barry


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Re: Missing panel items (was Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results)

[Stefano Rivera]

Hi Barry (2011.04.18_15:02:06_+0200)
> * The weather notifier is missing.  I really like this little notifier so I
>   know when to throw open the windows and get some fresh air!

Having a configurable date format would also be really nice.

> * System monitor.  I like this little applet because it gives me a quick way
>   to take the pulse of my system.   How hard it's running, is there a lot of
>   network activity going on, etc.

Really really miss that. My laptop's fan volume is a poor substitute for
system-monitor. I feel blind without it.

> * Force quit.  Some times you just need it and a kill -9 just isn't easy to
>   get to.

The force quit dialog that pops up a few seconds after you've tried to
close a non-responsive window usually does the trick for me.

SR

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Missing panel items (was Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results)

[Barry Warsaw]

Now that I'm using Unity a lot, I find that I'm missing a few things from the
classic desktop's upper panel.  I don't know how to get these back, if it's
even possible.

* The weather notifier is missing.  I really like this little notifier so I
  know when to throw open the windows and get some fresh air!

* System monitor.  I like this little applet because it gives me a quick way
  to take the pulse of my system.   How hard it's running, is there a lot of
  network activity going on, etc.

* Force quit.  Some times you just need it and a kill -9 just isn't easy to
  get to.

Cheers,
-Barry


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Rick Spencer]

On Sun, 2011-04-17 at 09:17 +0100, Paul Sladen wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Apr 2011, Rick Spencer wrote:
> > > > For brand new users? Some of the tasks aren't relevant.
> > > Which ones?
> > Changing the background image and setting in general.
> 
> On the contrary.  Changing the wallpaper and screensaver are comforting
> personalisation steps that new users seem to undertake on their own.
That was my point. You don't personalize something until you *own* it.
Until you've used it enough that you know how you want to own it. It's
not something you do while you are carrying out other tasks.

In any case, it's a moot point, since changing the desktop background
was something that the study found users could do easily, they were
blocked by the usability engineer telling them not to do it in the
obvious manner.

Cheers, Rick




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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Paul Sladen]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2011, Rick Spencer wrote:
> > > For brand new users? Some of the tasks aren't relevant.
> > Which ones?
> Changing the background image and setting in general.

On the contrary.  Changing the wallpaper and screensaver are comforting
personalisation steps that new users seem to undertake on their own.

Having a user (of their own free-will) spend 45 minutes fiddling with
all possible screensaver/wallpaper setting might not be interesting to
you, but it is an excellent subconscious reward-driven learning
experience for the user.  By the end, a person who has potentially
never used Ubuntu before has gained familiarity with the interface,
widget set, with the touchpad setting and scrollbars.

...Of course, since upstream GNOME extradicated most of the
screensaver options a few years ago this learning experience is
severely truncated---it's one thing I'd love to unchanged.

I have over the last decade has personal reports of people who've
switched to Ubuntu purely because of the screensavers after firing up
the LiveCD.  I assume for every report I've heard directly there were
10 who didn't know who to tell, 100 who were going to mention it but
didn't, 1,000 who forgot completely after getting hooked and buying
swag from the Canonical Ship and 10,000 who ... ad infinitum.

We try to ship excellent defaults.  We also ship more than one
wallpaper on the CD, and there's a reason for that.

-Paul


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Jono Bacon]

On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 03:00 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Rick Spencer wrote on 08/04/11 02:38:
> >...
> > Back at UDS for 11.04 in Orlando, Mark set the goal of using Unity by
> > default on the Ubutu desktop. Given the current course of development,
> > it appears that we are going to achieve this goal, and Unity will stay
> > the default for 11.04.
> > 
> > I'm following up on this list at the suggestion of the Tech Board to
> > give folks a chance to respond or escelate any concerns.
> >...
> 
> Last week, Charline Poirier ran a user test of Unity, with 11 individual
> participants. This week, I have helped Charline analyze the results.



Wonderful work, and now very visible work:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/04/16/0239213/5-Out-of-11-Crashed-Unity-In-Canonicals-Study
 ;-)

I think this feedback points to a series of design and engineering bugs
that we need to resolve in 11.10. Have the design bugs been filed in
Launchpad?

I think it could be worthwhile to rate the prioritization of the design
bugs based upon the level of success in your study. As an example, if
1/12 achieved a task, it would be a high priority bug, as opposed to if
10/12 achieved the task it would be a low priority bug.

I just want to ensure that we build this feedback into the design and
engineering iteration process.

Jono


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Rick Spencer]

On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 23:29 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Rick Spencer wrote on 15/04/11 15:08:
> >
> > First, thanks Usability Team! I know how much work goes into planning
> > and running a study like this, and how much agony is involved in
> > interpreting and writing up the results. It's clear that there are some
> > areas for improvement in 11.10, and these results will be instrumental
> > in helping to guide those investments.
> 
> Charline did all the planning and test moderation. I was just the
> stenographer afterwards.
> 
> Later on, Charline will publish a full report on the test. I just wanted
> to post a quick summary in time to be helpful for the default experience
> discussion.
> 
> > On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 22:48 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> >>
> >> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 03:00:31AM +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> >>>
> >>> *   8/10 people could find a window's menus, but 7/8 of them learned to
> >>> *   Only 4/11 worked out how to change the background picture.
> >>> *   6/10 could easily find and launch a game that wasn't in the
> >>> *   Only 1/9 (P4) easily added that game to the launcher.
> >>> *   9/11 people could easily close a window.
> >>> *   8/9 easily copied text from one document into another.
> >>> *   Only 5/10 could easily delete a document
> >>
> >> These seven items in particular seem like really basic tasks that
> >> ought to be testing at >90%, so these stats seem a lot lower than I'd
> >> expect.
> 
> > Well, think back to the last time you got a new device. For example, if
> > you have an Android phone. You are probably pretty facile with the
> > interface now, but if someone handed it to you and said "do this task
> > with it" you may have struggled to some basic things, like launching
> > apps. A lot of the fun for users in getting a new devices is learning
> > how to use it.
> 
> I didn't have anything close to that kind of trouble when trying out an
> Android phone. (Though like anyone on a developer mailing list, I'm not
> a representative sample.)
Oh? I recall learning many things on my phone. How to launch apps. How
to use the task manager to switch between running apps. How to enter
text in general and swype in particular. How to pull down the
notification area and how to push it up again, etc... If you were
watching over my shoulder you may have said "Fail Fail Fail" many times.
Perhaps you would have been correct, the usabliity could be better.
However, it's easy to forget the first few times you satisficed through
something compared to the hundreds of times you've done something after
you mastered it.

> 
> >...
> > For brand new users? Some of the tasks aren't relevant.
> 
> Which ones?
I believe the following are tasks indicative of repeated and experienced
usage, not first time usage:
 * Changing the background image and setting in general.
 * Adding a game to the launcher.
 * Rearranging items in the launcher.

And these were some that users had the most trouble with.

Cheers, Rick


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Rick Spencer wrote on 15/04/11 15:08:
>
> First, thanks Usability Team! I know how much work goes into planning
> and running a study like this, and how much agony is involved in
> interpreting and writing up the results. It's clear that there are some
> areas for improvement in 11.10, and these results will be instrumental
> in helping to guide those investments.

Charline did all the planning and test moderation. I was just the
stenographer afterwards.

Later on, Charline will publish a full report on the test. I just wanted
to post a quick summary in time to be helpful for the default experience
discussion.

> On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 22:48 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 03:00:31AM +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>>>
>>> *   8/10 people could find a window's menus, but 7/8 of them learned to
>>> *   Only 4/11 worked out how to change the background picture.
>>> *   6/10 could easily find and launch a game that wasn't in the
>>> *   Only 1/9 (P4) easily added that game to the launcher.
>>> *   9/11 people could easily close a window.
>>> *   8/9 easily copied text from one document into another.
>>> *   Only 5/10 could easily delete a document
>>
>> These seven items in particular seem like really basic tasks that
>> ought to be testing at >90%, so these stats seem a lot lower than I'd
>> expect.

> Well, think back to the last time you got a new device. For example, if
> you have an Android phone. You are probably pretty facile with the
> interface now, but if someone handed it to you and said "do this task
> with it" you may have struggled to some basic things, like launching
> apps. A lot of the fun for users in getting a new devices is learning
> how to use it.

I didn't have anything close to that kind of trouble when trying out an
Android phone. (Though like anyone on a developer mailing list, I'm not
a representative sample.)

>...
> For brand new users? Some of the tasks aren't relevant.

Which ones?

>...
>> Also, these tests measure usability, but not their overall impression.
>> Did they like it?  Find it frustrating/confusing?
>
> This is actually a very important question. For me, when I go back to
> Classic, it feels very old and mundane. Many theories hold that the
> aesthetics trump usability, or at least strongly influence the
> perception of the usability of a system. In other words, given 2
> identically design systems that only differ in terms of theming, for
> example, users will rate the system with the more pleasing design to be
> more "usable" and are more likely to start using it. 
>...

This is the aesthetic usability effect.



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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Martin Owens]

On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 13:00 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> the target audience for Ubuntu. 

People who have never used Ubuntu before?

I hope the day comes when we run out of that audience.

Martin,


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Toby Smithe]

2011/4/15 Matthew Paul Thomas :
> *   8/10 people could find a window's menus, but 7/8 of them learned to
>    access them by hovering over maximized close/minimize/unmaximize
>    buttons then moving horizontally -- which was extremely slow, and
>    failed whenever the window wasn't maximized.

Why not swap the default state of the panel from one where the
application name is shown in full and the menus hidden, to the
alternative where the menus are shown, and long application names are
partially obscured? Then, allow that if someone mouse-overs the
application name, it reveals itself fully; in this case, an arrow
symbol (for example) could be included to make this action
discoverable.

I believe this swap wouldn't cause any usability problems (unless
knowing the long name of a window is critically important), but
instead would make the location of window menus obvious.

Of course, if it is intentional that menus are hard to discover (to
push application developers towards Chrome-like streamlining), or if
there would be problems due to claims of Mac-mimicry, then it clearly
makes sense to keep the current behaviour.

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Bryce Harrington]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 11:17:32AM -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 13:16 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 12:41:22PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> > > On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 02:17:47PM -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
> > I don't think we should do this unless we also have the manpower
> > resources identified to bring apps up to meet the standards.  There are
> > a lot of otherwise good, powerful applications which simply haven't kept
> > up with the latest GUI technologies, and it would be shooting ourselves
> > in the foot to simply drop them.
> 
> Well, I don't think we'll ever have the manpower to change all of Open
> Source for any particular vision.  I'd love that, but I think the
> expectation is unreasonable.

Yes, I completely agree there.  Thus I think the tactic of dropping
applications that don't change to meet our requirements would simply be
detrimental to our own goals.  In a way it's sort of a blackmailing
strategy -- do something or else we'll do something to diminish your
project.  It might work in a few cases, but it's also going to piss
others off who may choose to do differently just for orneriness, and
there's going to be a huge number of projects that just won't care one
way or the other.  I think in the end we'd find ourselves in a difficult
position of having to either drop a lot of software from the archive
that we'd actually prefer keeping, or break with the policies.

> > If the goal here is to motivate projects to implement particular
> > technologies that we want to see more consistent across applications,
> > there are way more effective tactics to employ for that...
> 
> Like? :-)

I'm glad you asked.  :-)

First, understand there are basically four categories of projects we're
talking about:

a. Finished projects.  The program works and is stable.  It may or may
   not be maintained, but new feature work is not going to be done.

b. Active, pro-Ubuntu projects.

c. Active, but Ubuntu-agnostic projects.

d. Failed projects.  The code's available but in buggy state, no one is
   left actively maintaining it.

Obviously, some tactics will work great with one type of projects, but
fail miserably with the others.  With that said, here's a list of
suggestions:

* Visibility in USC.  Like the blackmail approach but we're using a
  carrot instead of a stick.  Apps that don't meet the requirement will
  still be available via apt, but won't be findable through USC.  (Or
  maybe a checkbox buried deep in a menu allows for non-compliant
  software.)  Or it could be a factor in determining "Preferred" apps.

* Barn raising.  Like a cross between BugDays and Ubuntu Developer Week,
  you'd arrange a week where each day you'd have a session to discuss
  and explain one of the requirements, and encourage community people to
  engage in implementing that functionality for various applications.
  You build a list of suggested apps to work on, and let people sign up
  for one to work on (individually or small teams).  Show them how to
  submit patches to the regular sponsoring process, give some tips or
  help forwarding the patches upstream.  Look at how well received the
  PaperCuts project has been; here we're using basically the same
  approach.

* Publish a Ubuntu Human Interface Guideline.  You'll remember in
  Inkscape early on we paid a lot of attention to HIG compliance even
  though we weren't even a GNOME project.  Having that guideline
  available for reference settled a lot of arguments.  Make it well
  written, well thought out, and backed by design and usability experts
  and testing, and I should think it would sell itself, no need for
  carrots or sticks at all.

* Split the archive.  Instead of Main/Universe, you'd have
  Main/Galaxy/Universe, where Galaxy is the subset of universe that
  meets the new Ubuntu policies.  Universe still exists for those who
  really need it, but most people would be encouraged to stay within
  just Galaxy.

* Roadmap it.  Create a list of all the apps you want to support the set
  of requirements.  Prioritize and organize them into a sequence of
  steps, easiest/most-important first, and hardest/least-important
  later.  Don't attach any due dates, but imply that achieving one phase
  per Ubuntu release would be desirable.  Then, start from the top
  implementing the functionality into the first group.  Encourage others
  to hop in and join the effort at whatever point in the roadmap they
  feel motivated to work on.  Let the projects on the roadmap know that
  they're on it; indeed that alone may be enough motivation for them to
  do the implementation work themselves rather than wait for someone to
  do it externally.

Well you get the drift, there's probably a lot more ideas along these
lines.  The basic idea is not to motivate people by making threats of
taking something away; instead find something you can easily give as an
exchange, or identify a rallying point to gather people to your cause.

> > If the go

Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Bryce Harrington]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 01:33:27PM +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Bryce Harrington wrote on 15/04/11 06:48:
> > On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 03:00:31AM +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > Also, these tests measure usability, but not their overall impression.
> > Did they like it?  Find it frustrating/confusing?
> >...
> 
> In my limited experience, user test participants can often be highly
> complimentary about an interface that completely failed them (or
> critical of an interface where they had no trouble). They can also start
> guessing about what other people what other people might think, or
> guessing about how easily they might learn something later.

Good point.  Even so I find the comments on their impressions adds a lot
of context to the numbers, so thanks muchly for forwarding them.

AIUI, ensuring a good initial impression was one of the major goals for
the new design work, and judging from the comments this was definitely
achieved.  Most everyone had positive comments as to the aesthetics.
My favorite is: "So I want to play with it now."

Of the negative comments, the theme seems to be around learnability,
which may also be a quirk of the testing process (people may have felt
pressure to do the given tasks quickly so they can complete the test).
But this issue has also gotten a fair bit of airing on blogs and mailing
lists.  I've heard several sources also make P4's suggestion about
making demo videos easily available.

Jorge put out a demo video on how to multitask in Unity, which I found
very engaging and enlightening.  Ideally stuff should be discoverable,
but until it is maybe an effective workaround would be to just ensure
demo videos are easily at hand?  Like a hyperlink to an online
collection of videos that's provided in the global help menu, on the
desktop, or on the welcome page of the webbrowser or something.

Bryce

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Bryce Harrington]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 07:08:02AM -0700, Rick Spencer wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 22:48 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 03:00:31AM +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > > *   8/10 people could find a window's menus, but 7/8 of them learned to
> > > *   Only 4/11 worked out how to change the background picture.
> > > *   6/10 could easily find and launch a game that wasn't in the
> > > *   Only 1/9 (P4) easily added that game to the launcher.
> > > *   9/11 people could easily close a window.
> > > *   8/9 easily copied text from one document into another.
> > > *   Only 5/10 could easily delete a document
> > 
> > These seven items in particular seem like really basic tasks that ought
> > to be testing at >90%, so these stats seem a lot lower than I'd expect.
> Well, think back to the last time you got a new device.

No, I definitely agree there, but this is why I suggested a control
group - to help understand if it's just ordinary newbie level learning
curve stuff.  Like, maybe with Classic Desktop only 2/10 new users could
find a new game (esp. if they're equating USC with the recycling bin...)
so 6/10 with unity would be a huge step forward.  On the other hand if
with Classic it's at 9/10 then I think you'd be right that it's an area
needing further attention.

In any case, I'm loving the numbers, you know how much I geek out on
quantification of issues.  :-)

I would love to see this same test repeated again every so often, so we
can chart the results and use them to demonstrate that we're getting
better.

mpt's additional info adds a lot more context to the numbers and makes
them sound a lot less troublesome, but I'll comment against that one
separately.

Bryce

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Ted Gould]

On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 13:16 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 12:41:22PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 02:17:47PM -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
> > > But, I'd also love to see the requirements for Universe be something
> > > higher than just the DFSG.  For instance, I believe Debian requires
> > > everything in /usr/bin to have a man page.  Many of these I see as the
> > > modern desktop equivalent of having a man page.
> > 
> > eXtreme +1
> > 
> > And not just universe. I would love this requirement to be more strictly
> > enforced in the entire Ubuntu archive.
> 
> I don't think we should do this unless we also have the manpower
> resources identified to bring apps up to meet the standards.  There are
> a lot of otherwise good, powerful applications which simply haven't kept
> up with the latest GUI technologies, and it would be shooting ourselves
> in the foot to simply drop them.

Well, I don't think we'll ever have the manpower to change all of Open
Source for any particular vision.  I'd love that, but I think the
expectation is unreasonable.  What we can do is provide leadership in
what makes good software, and be clear about our standards there.  I
would for instance, be against any requirement that didn't have a good
guide on how to fix it and perhaps a UDW presentation on it.  We
shouldn't adopt new standards quickly or randomly.  But starting to set
a process in place for adopting new standards is the first step.

> If the goal here is to motivate projects to implement particular
> technologies that we want to see more consistent across applications,
> there are way more effective tactics to employ for that...

Like? :-)

> If the goal is to clear out clutter from universe and/or main that we
> have to support, I would think Debian already should have processes for
> this?

It's less about trying to "clear out" as much as "make better."  I
imagine that most projects would have the examples I listed as a goal,
that they'll get to at some point.  We'd just be establishing a deadline
or requirement for that.  It's like the student doing their homework
midnight before it's due -- I imagine that a lot of projects would get
around to it if there was a movement in that direction.

--Ted



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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Mackenzie Morgan]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 10:08 AM, Rick Spencer
 wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 22:48 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
>> I'm curious whether these stats are higher/lower/same-as with Classic
>> Desktop.  IOW this needs a control group so we can tell if the new
>> design brings improvement or regression.
> For brand new users? Some of the tasks aren't relevant. For others, like
> finding installed applications, I presume this was dead easy in Classic
> GNOME, but it's hard to say for a certain.

Not all packages have .desktop files, and there are probably some that
have poor categorisation.  Either way, I've seen plenty of "I
installed $application, now where did it go?" in #ubuntu (so, classic
mode).  Not as many as "I installed Ubuntu, and I have no sound," but
still a high enough number to be a little concerning.

Also, OnBoard doesn't have a menu entry.  Yes, a bug is filed.

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Rick Spencer]

First, thanks Usability Team! I know how much work goes into planning
and running a study like this, and how much agony is involved in
interpreting and writing up the results. It's clear that there are some
areas for improvement in 11.10, and these results will be instrumental
in helping to guide those investments.

On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 22:48 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 03:00:31AM +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > *   8/10 people could find a window's menus, but 7/8 of them learned to
> > *   Only 4/11 worked out how to change the background picture.
> > *   6/10 could easily find and launch a game that wasn't in the
> > *   Only 1/9 (P4) easily added that game to the launcher.
> > *   9/11 people could easily close a window.
> > *   8/9 easily copied text from one document into another.
> > *   Only 5/10 could easily delete a document
> 
> These seven items in particular seem like really basic tasks that ought
> to be testing at >90%, so these stats seem a lot lower than I'd expect.
Well, think back to the last time you got a new device. For example, if
you have an Android phone. You are probably pretty facile with the
interface now, but if someone handed it to you and said "do this task
with it" you may have struggled to some basic things, like launching
apps. A lot of the fun for users in getting a new devices is learning
how to use it.

Given my experience, these numbers look they could be improved, but I
don't find them particularly concerning. For example, you can easily use
Unity quite productively before you learn that you can add items to the
launcher, or change the background picture, though I suspect many
Windows users would right-click and the desktop to set the background
picture and would do fine.

The only area here that is at all concerning to me regards launching
applications. I'd like to see some focus on the application lens in
11.10 (see what I did I did there? :) )

> 
> I'm curious whether these stats are higher/lower/same-as with Classic
> Desktop.  IOW this needs a control group so we can tell if the new
> design brings improvement or regression.
For brand new users? Some of the tasks aren't relevant. For others, like
finding installed applications, I presume this was dead easy in Classic
GNOME, but it's hard to say for a certain.

> 
> Also, these tests measure usability, but not their overall impression.
> Did they like it?  Find it frustrating/confusing?
This is actually a very important question. For me, when I go back to
Classic, it feels very old and mundane. Many theories hold that the
aesthetics trump usability, or at least strongly influence the
perception of the usability of a system. In other words, given 2
identically design systems that only differ in terms of theming, for
example, users will rate the system with the more pleasing design to be
more "usable" and are more likely to start using it. 

Cheers, Rick


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Leonardo Jose Gamboa Magaña]

En Mon, 11 Apr 2011 08:26:35 -0500, Martin Owens   
escribió:



On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 04:22 -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote:

I think it's the height of arrogance for us to tell a user that we're
going to deliberately break his application because it wasn't updated
to
use our new indicator library.


We tell users all the time that we've broken their windows application
by not implementing any windows apis. No guarantees.

So, do we guarantee completely that gnome 2.x apps will function in
Unity? If we do, then we should support the entire API (somehow),
otherwise we be honest and say we support a major subset which may mean
your app won't work completely.

It can hardly be arrogance so long as we're honest about what we
support.

Martin Owens





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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Scott Kitterman]

On Friday, April 15, 2011 12:52:58 AM Kate Stewart wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 23:40 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > On Thursday, April 14, 2011 10:00:31 PM Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > > In this summary, I have numbered the participants:
> > > - P1, 19, a student and Mac user
> > > - P2, 33, an administrator and Mac user
> > > - P3, 25, a student and Windows user
> > > - P4, 32, a teacher and Windows user
> > > - P5, 27, a compliance officer who uses both Windows and Mac
> > > - P7, 44, a life coach who uses both Windows and Ubuntu
> > > - P8, 30, an IT network manager and Windows user
> > > - P9, 22, a student and Windows user
> > > - P10, 21, a student and Windows user
> > > - P11, 47, a teacher and Windows user
> > > - P12, 34, an operations manager and Windows user.
> > 
> > Would you characterize this as a reasonable (for it's sample size)
> > representation of the target audience for Unity?
> 
> I'd also ask that a couple of folks 60+ (retired, new user to computers,
> as well as existing Mac and windows) be surveyed if possible.
> 
> I'm running into a lot of folks in that demographic (think start of baby
> boom retirement bubble ;) ) that tell me they like Ubuntu, and certainly
> like the price, so getting that demographic's input and factoring in
> their impressions could be useful.

I think that would be interesting, particularly since there seems (from my 
casual observation) to have been a lot of focus in Unity's design on making 
'good' choices that aren't constrained by being in line with what experienced 
computer users would expect.

One dichotomy I see between this study group and this discussion is a lack of 
any dedicated Ubuntu users.  I know there's a lot of focus on jumping the 
chasm, but I would have thought it would have been useful to see how an 
experienced user of Ubuntu's version of Gnome managed to transition to Unity.

Scott K

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Kate Stewart wrote on 15/04/11 05:52:
>
> On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 23:40 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
>>
>> On Thursday, April 14, 2011 10:00:31 PM Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>>>
>>> In this summary, I have numbered the participants:
>>> - P1, 19, a student and Mac user
>>> - P2, 33, an administrator and Mac user
>>> - P3, 25, a student and Windows user
>>> - P4, 32, a teacher and Windows user
>>> - P5, 27, a compliance officer who uses both Windows and Mac
>>> - P7, 44, a life coach who uses both Windows and Ubuntu
>>> - P8, 30, an IT network manager and Windows user
>>> - P9, 22, a student and Windows user
>>> - P10, 21, a student and Windows user
>>> - P11, 47, a teacher and Windows user
>>> - P12, 34, an operations manager and Windows user.
>>
>> Would you characterize this as a reasonable (for it's sample size) 
>> representation of the target audience for Unity?

I've just asked Charline, and she says it is representative of the
target audience for Ubuntu.

> I'd also ask that a couple of folks 60+ (retired, new user to computers,
> as well as existing Mac and windows) be surveyed if possible. 
>...

In the past Canonical has run tests of Ubuntu with other specific
segments, e.g. 50-something women, but we haven't done that sort of
testing on Unity yet. (Of course, nothing prevents any other
organization from testing it with whoever they like.)

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Bryce Harrington wrote on 15/04/11 06:48:
>
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 03:00:31AM +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>>
>> *   8/10 people could find a window's menus, but 7/8 of them learned to
>> *   Only 4/11 worked out how to change the background picture.
>> *   6/10 could easily find and launch a game that wasn't in the
>> *   Only 1/9 (P4) easily added that game to the launcher.
>> *   9/11 people could easily close a window.
>> *   8/9 easily copied text from one document into another.
>> *   Only 5/10 could easily delete a document
> 
> These seven items in particular seem like really basic tasks that ought
> to be testing at >90%, so these stats seem a lot lower than I'd expect.
> 
> I'm curious whether these stats are higher/lower/same-as with Classic
> Desktop.  IOW this needs a control group so we can tell if the new
> design brings improvement or regression.

Sure, that's the main problem with using this data. The test was
intended to find fixable problems in Unity, not to compare Unity with
Classic. And the tests Canonical has done on Ubuntu previously have
mostly been on other tasks, such as importing photos and music and
burning CDs.

> Also, these tests measure usability, but not their overall impression.
> Did they like it?  Find it frustrating/confusing?
>...

In my limited experience, user test participants can often be highly
complimentary about an interface that completely failed them (or
critical of an interface where they had no trouble). They can also start
guessing about what other people what other people might think, or
guessing about how easily they might learn something later.

That said, here's a representative sample.

P1: "I've got a Mac, and I think it's quite similar to a Mac, the
layout, which made it easier to use. I think people going from Windows
to this would need a little help, because it's a very different layout."
And: "It's a nice casual-ish font that you've used here."

P2: "I'm guessing the way it's set at the moment, with the wallpaper,
the background, I'd personally want everything to be crisper and clearer
and more obvious ... I find it all a bit blending into each other, with
those settings. But I do like the overall design of it, with the nice
curves and the nice icons at the side, and the font used, and the design
of it's really nice."

P3: "It's prettier than a lot of current operating systems." And: "I
don't think it's a complicated operating system ... it would just take
time."

P4: "Some of the features, like when you minimize something you don't
find the menu bar, so it's quite hard to find." And: "The simple is
quite simple, not too hard to follow or too hard to understand. If
possible, if you could give them a demo. This is where you go to get a
file, this is where you get all your icons, for the first time user,
obviously."

P5: "I really quite like it. I think it's quite intuitive, with the
exception of the favorites, making an application a favorite, which
obviously I wasn't able to achieve. I wouldn't be baffled about how to
use this operating system for the first time, if I didn't have a manual
to read ... It's quite clean-looking, it's quite modern-looking. It
seems to me to be closer to a Mac-style operating system than to a
Microsoft-style operating system."

P7: "No. I don't know. So at this point, I would have to say my initial
impressions are -- I wouldn't write it off, because I've heard too many
good things about it, but my initial impressions are 'Damn, I'm going to
need a manual' ... I don't really want to do that, which is a bit lazy
of me, I know." At the end: "It's not really working for me. I'm finding
it time-consuming and slightly confusing at times ... That's my kind of
bottom-line impression, really, that the differential [between Windows
and Ubuntu], the gap is really very big."

P8: "Maybe the settings should have been more prominent, but I found
them eventually. Fairly standard. If it can run anything I wanted, I
would consider it."

P9: "It's okay ... It's not as confusing as the Mac."

P10: "So generally I think it's pretty good. I think it needs some work
on it. I think making it a bit more intuitive."

P11: "Oh yikes, is it like Apple? ... I never liked the [Mac] interface.
I didn't know where I stored things, where I put things. I like these
pictures. It's aesthetically pleasing. It also looks like it's
child-friendly, because it's pictures. And it looks more ordered than
Apple. So I want to play with it now." At the end: "I think it's pretty.
It's aesthetically pleasing."

P12: "And I really like the cleanness of it all. It's tidy." At the end:
"It's quick and responsive. I'm still frustrated that I'm not able to
find anything like My Computer. And hardware as well, I want to see what
the hardware is, the versions of the graphics and drivers."

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Roth Robert]

Hi,

As an opinion related to the topic (to appindicator or not to
appindicator/to systray or not to systray):
I don't know whether this is feasible or not (in some languages it is, in
others it is not), but why not support legacy tray items with custom
appindicators?
As there is legacy systray support in the Unity top panel, I guess we know
about all the GtkStatusIcon ... can't we find the menus and actions
associated with them ?
There are some cases for systray apps:
1) The app does something on left-click, and shows a menu on right click ->
in this case, the menu should be migrated to an application indicator, which
has an additional item before/after the menu items for the left-click
functionality.
2) The app has separate actions for left and righ-click -> application
indicator with two items (not fully compliant to HIG, but remember, this is
a fallback solution)
3) The same case as in 1), only the buttons are switched (rare case, but
happens) : leftclick shows menu, right-click takes a specific action.

To visually fit, I guess it is possible to draw any icon from the "fallback
tray" in monochrome, so that way it would be "sort of" consistent (as icons
designed to be monochrome are far better then desaturated icons) visually,
and behavior-wise too, as you could use the left-right-up-down keys to
navigate in menus/switch between indicators ...

Robert



On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 5:21 PM, Barry Warsaw  wrote:

> On Apr 14, 2011, at 09:49 AM, Scott Kitterman wrote:
>
> >Unless it's a package developed specifically for Ubuntu, it's really not a
> >bug in the package from an upstream perspective.  Some upstreams will
> choose
> >to support Ubuntu specific requirements and others won't.  For those that
> >don't, either users will lose out on functionality or we'll have to
> develop
> >and maintain Ubuntu specific patches.
>
> I think this is a really important perspective to maintain, and not just in
> this specific case.  We want to innovate in Ubuntu and encourage apps and
> tools to support those Ubuntu innovations.  From an upstream's perspective
> though, Ubuntu is often just one of many platforms they have to support.
> Sometimes they'll make a special case for a particular platform (e.g.
> Windows
> or OS X), but it can be a tougher decision to support a special case of a
> special case (i.e. Linux -> Ubuntu).
>
> I encountered a similar situation recently with the impact of multiarch on
> upstream Python, an issue I'll write more about later.  But in those cases
> where we are innovating and encouraging upstream adoption, I think we need
> to
> do more to better communicate those changes, and provide longer periods of
> compatibility, or commit to developing and carrying Ubuntu specific changes
> for a potentially long time.  It's a difficult balance between pushing
> things
> forward and maintaining a good and consistent user experience.
>
> Cheers,
> -Barry
>
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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Christoph Langner]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Mackenzie Morgan  wrote:
> I saw a complaint about Dropbox & Keepass yesterday
> http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2011/04/13/%23ubuntu+1.html#t19:28
> I haven't tried Skype, but seeing as it's proprietary (Dropbox too, I
> think?) I doubt they'd modify to fit the indicators

Dropbox has already experimental support for indicators [1] which
works quite good.

[1] http://www.webupd8.org/2011/03/get-dropbox-appindicator-to-work-in.html

Christoph

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Celeste Lyn Paul]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 1:48 AM, Bryce Harrington  wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 03:00:31AM +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>> *   8/10 people could find a window's menus, but 7/8 of them learned to
>> *   Only 4/11 worked out how to change the background picture.
>> *   6/10 could easily find and launch a game that wasn't in the
>> *   Only 1/9 (P4) easily added that game to the launcher.
>> *   9/11 people could easily close a window.
>> *   8/9 easily copied text from one document into another.
>> *   Only 5/10 could easily delete a document
>
> These seven items in particular seem like really basic tasks that ought
> to be testing at >90%, so these stats seem a lot lower than I'd expect.

What would be telling is if the people who didn't figure out the task
the first time remembered how to complete it the next time. That shows
that the task is learnable, which is acceptable if the curve matches
the difficulty of the functionality. Unfortunately very rarely do you
use the same users for multiple tests (in fact it is usually
discouraged unless you are doing longitudinal studies) except in
longitudinal studies.

>
> I'm curious whether these stats are higher/lower/same-as with Classic
> Desktop.  IOW this needs a control group so we can tell if the new
> design brings improvement or regression.
>
> Also, these tests measure usability, but not their overall impression.
> Did they like it?  Find it frustrating/confusing?

Do people in the UK use the System Usability Scale, NASA TLX, or
Modified-Cooper Harper? Theyre assessment surveys that measure
satisfaction and cognitive load, but I've only seen human factors
engineers use them.

>
> Bryce
>
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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Bryce Harrington]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 03:00:31AM +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> *   8/10 people could find a window's menus, but 7/8 of them learned to
> *   Only 4/11 worked out how to change the background picture.
> *   6/10 could easily find and launch a game that wasn't in the
> *   Only 1/9 (P4) easily added that game to the launcher.
> *   9/11 people could easily close a window.
> *   8/9 easily copied text from one document into another.
> *   Only 5/10 could easily delete a document

These seven items in particular seem like really basic tasks that ought
to be testing at >90%, so these stats seem a lot lower than I'd expect.

I'm curious whether these stats are higher/lower/same-as with Classic
Desktop.  IOW this needs a control group so we can tell if the new
design brings improvement or regression.

Also, these tests measure usability, but not their overall impression.
Did they like it?  Find it frustrating/confusing?

Bryce

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Kate Stewart]

On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 23:40 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> On Thursday, April 14, 2011 10:00:31 PM Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > In this summary, I have numbered the participants:
> > - P1, 19, a student and Mac user
> > - P2, 33, an administrator and Mac user
> > - P3, 25, a student and Windows user
> > - P4, 32, a teacher and Windows user
> > - P5, 27, a compliance officer who uses both Windows and Mac
> > - P7, 44, a life coach who uses both Windows and Ubuntu
> > - P8, 30, an IT network manager and Windows user
> > - P9, 22, a student and Windows user
> > - P10, 21, a student and Windows user
> > - P11, 47, a teacher and Windows user
> > - P12, 34, an operations manager and Windows user.
> 
> Would you characterize this as a reasonable (for it's sample size) 
> representation of the target audience for Unity?

I'd also ask that a couple of folks 60+ (retired, new user to computers,
as well as existing Mac and windows) be surveyed if possible. 

I'm running into a lot of folks in that demographic (think start of baby
boom retirement bubble ;) ) that tell me they like Ubuntu, and certainly
like the price, so getting that demographic's input and factoring in
their impressions could be useful.

Kate




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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, April 14, 2011 10:00:31 PM Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> In this summary, I have numbered the participants:
> - P1, 19, a student and Mac user
> - P2, 33, an administrator and Mac user
> - P3, 25, a student and Windows user
> - P4, 32, a teacher and Windows user
> - P5, 27, a compliance officer who uses both Windows and Mac
> - P7, 44, a life coach who uses both Windows and Ubuntu
> - P8, 30, an IT network manager and Windows user
> - P9, 22, a student and Windows user
> - P10, 21, a student and Windows user
> - P11, 47, a teacher and Windows user
> - P12, 34, an operations manager and Windows user.

Would you characterize this as a reasonable (for it's sample size) 
representation of the target audience for Unity?

Scott K

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Rick Spencer wrote on 08/04/11 02:38:
>...
> Back at UDS for 11.04 in Orlando, Mark set the goal of using Unity by
> default on the Ubutu desktop. Given the current course of development,
> it appears that we are going to achieve this goal, and Unity will stay
> the default for 11.04.
> 
> I'm following up on this list at the suggestion of the Tech Board to
> give folks a chance to respond or escelate any concerns.
>...

Last week, Charline Poirier ran a user test of Unity, with 11 individual
participants. This week, I have helped Charline analyze the results.

In this summary, I have numbered the participants:
- - P1, 19, a student and Mac user
- - P2, 33, an administrator and Mac user
- - P3, 25, a student and Windows user
- - P4, 32, a teacher and Windows user
- - P5, 27, a compliance officer who uses both Windows and Mac
- - P7, 44, a life coach who uses both Windows and Ubuntu
- - P8, 30, an IT network manager and Windows user
- - P9, 22, a student and Windows user
- - P10, 21, a student and Windows user
- - P11, 47, a teacher and Windows user
- - P12, 34, an operations manager and Windows user.

The test machine was a Lenovo ThinkPad T410i running Ubuntu Natty with
unity 3.8.2-0ubuntu1 and compiz 1:0.9.4git20110322-0ubuntu5.

Charline asked each participant to try several tasks. Not every
participant had time to try every task.

*   Every participant who was asked understood most of the launcher
items. P7 and P11 thought that "LibreOffice Calc" was a calculator,
and P7 and P9 thought Ubuntu Software Center was the Recycle Bin.
Nobody understood Ubuntu One. (The Classic session has much smaller
icons for everything, but has a visible-by-default label plus an
extra tooltip for each app.)

*   Almost everyone understood most of the indicators, but 4/11 people
(P7, P9, P11, P12) thought the Me menu icon might be a close button.

*   11/11 people easily launched Firefox to check Web mail.

*   8/10 people could find a window's menus, but 7/8 of them learned to
access them by hovering over maximized close/minimize/unmaximize
buttons then moving horizontally -- which was extremely slow, and
failed whenever the window wasn't maximized.

*   10/11 worked out how to open a new Firefox window, though 5/10 first
tried clicking Firefox in the launcher again, which didn't work.

*   Only 4/11 worked out how to change the background picture. This is
not as bad as it looks: for some of the others, Charline had asked
them *not* to right-click on the desktop, because she was testing
access to settings in general. Nevertheless, no-one found System
Settings, in the session menu or anywhere else.

*   Only 5/11 could easily rearrange items in the launcher. For the
other six, the main problems were that the launcher scrolled when
they were trying to drag an item, or that it didn't accept a drop.
(P10 was particularly unlucky in doing a Dash search for "menu" and
finding the Main Menu editor, which is useless in Unity but still
present by default.)

*   6/10 could easily find and launch a game that wasn't in the
launcher. (P2 deserves special mention for finding and launching the
game's .desktop file amongst piles of detritus in Nautilus's "File
System" search results.)

*   Only 1/9 (P4) easily added that game to the launcher. For the other
eight, the main problems were that the launcher disappeared when a
window was maximized or at the left of the screen, that Dash items
didn't have context menus, and that the launcher often didn't accept
a drop.

*   2/2 successfully removed an item from the launcher.

*   Only 2/6 noticed an XChat Gnome notification, despite (1) a
notification bubble appearing, (2) the Ubuntu button going blue,
(3) the messaging menu envelope going blue, and (4) an emblem
appearing on XChat Gnome's launcher.

*   9/9 easily launched LibreOffice Writer to write a letter.

*   5/5 easily found today's date.

*   9/9 easily saved their LibreOffice Writer document. (P1 recovered
amazingly well after trying to save "Letter to Mr Smith 08/04/11",
and getting the vile response "Error stating file '/home/ubuntu
/Documents/Letter to Mr Smith 08/04': No such file or directory").

*   9/11 people could easily close a window. The other two (P2, P7)
were not the only ones to be attacked by a bug that hid the title
bar for a window underneath the menu bar; they were just the only
participants for whom that bug really cramped their style.

*   9/9 easily found and opened an existing document.

*   8/9 easily copied text from one document into another. The other one
(P2) managed it eventually, but the missing title bar for one of the
document windows was again a major stumbling block.

*   Only 1/7 (P9, a Windows 7 user) easily arranged windows side by side
by discovering the window snap feature. (That's probably not reall

Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Bryce Harrington]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 12:41:22PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 02:17:47PM -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
> > But, I'd also love to see the requirements for Universe be something
> > higher than just the DFSG.  For instance, I believe Debian requires
> > everything in /usr/bin to have a man page.  Many of these I see as the
> > modern desktop equivalent of having a man page.
> 
> eXtreme +1
> 
> And not just universe. I would love this requirement to be more strictly
> enforced in the entire Ubuntu archive.

I don't think we should do this unless we also have the manpower
resources identified to bring apps up to meet the standards.  There are
a lot of otherwise good, powerful applications which simply haven't kept
up with the latest GUI technologies, and it would be shooting ourselves
in the foot to simply drop them.

If the goal here is to motivate projects to implement particular
technologies that we want to see more consistent across applications,
there are way more effective tactics to employ for that...

If the goal is to clear out clutter from universe and/or main that we
have to support, I would think Debian already should have processes for
this?

Bryce

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Kees Cook]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 02:17:47PM -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
> But, I'd also love to see the requirements for Universe be something
> higher than just the DFSG.  For instance, I believe Debian requires
> everything in /usr/bin to have a man page.  Many of these I see as the
> modern desktop equivalent of having a man page.

eXtreme +1

And not just universe. I would love this requirement to be more strictly
enforced in the entire Ubuntu archive.

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Ubuntu Security Team

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Jorge O. Castro]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Mackenzie Morgan  wrote:
> I saw a complaint about Dropbox & Keepass yesterday
> http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2011/04/13/%23ubuntu+1.html#t19:28
> I haven't tried Skype, but seeing as it's proprietary (Dropbox too, I
> think?) I doubt they'd modify to fit the indicators

Dropbox works with indicators in their forum builds:
http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=36376&replies=27#post-310212

They've also adapted to fit the icon theme, so it looks nice. In the
past they've waited until like beta-ish to fix things up (their
previous stable release does support app indicators in 10.10), and
considering they always almost usually update their repository when we
release I've no doubt they'll sort it out in time.

-- 
Jorge Castro
Canonical Ltd.
http://twitter.com/castrojo
Help fix Unity Bitesize Bugs: http://goo.gl/i1WA1

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, April 14, 2011 03:17:47 PM Ted Gould wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 20:47 +0200, Benjamin Drung wrote:
> > Am Donnerstag, den 14.04.2011, 12:39 -0500 schrieb Ted Gould:
> > > I hope that one day we can get to the point of having UI requirements
> > > on applications within the Ubuntu process similar to the security
> > > requirements that exist with an MIR today.
> > > 
> > > So, for instance a package couldn't be in the Ubuntu archive:
> > >   * if it required the system tray
> > >   * didn't support localization
> > >   * didn't have basic accessibility support
> > >   * doesn't provide any user documentation
> > >   * uses it's own notification system instead of the FD.o one
> > 
> > Do you really want to reject those package if they do not meet the
> > criteria above? I think everything (complying to the DFSG) should be
> > accepted in universe. Having those restrictions for packages in main
> > would be fine.
> 
> I want to reiterate that the list above was just off the top of my head
> meant as an example more than to be definitive.  For most of these
> examples I would think that main is a more reasonable target.
> 
> But, I'd also love to see the requirements for Universe be something
> higher than just the DFSG.  For instance, I believe Debian requires
> everything in /usr/bin to have a man page.  Many of these I see as the
> modern desktop equivalent of having a man page.

Debian requires it and it's a bug if it's missing, but it doesn't block the 
package being in the archive.

Scott K

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Ted Gould]

On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 20:47 +0200, Benjamin Drung wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, den 14.04.2011, 12:39 -0500 schrieb Ted Gould:
> > I hope that one day we can get to the point of having UI requirements on
> > applications within the Ubuntu process similar to the security
> > requirements that exist with an MIR today.
> > 
> > So, for instance a package couldn't be in the Ubuntu archive:
> >   * if it required the system tray
> >   * didn't support localization
> >   * didn't have basic accessibility support
> >   * doesn't provide any user documentation
> >   * uses it's own notification system instead of the FD.o one
> 
> Do you really want to reject those package if they do not meet the
> criteria above? I think everything (complying to the DFSG) should be
> accepted in universe. Having those restrictions for packages in main
> would be fine.

I want to reiterate that the list above was just off the top of my head
meant as an example more than to be definitive.  For most of these
examples I would think that main is a more reasonable target.

But, I'd also love to see the requirements for Universe be something
higher than just the DFSG.  For instance, I believe Debian requires
everything in /usr/bin to have a man page.  Many of these I see as the
modern desktop equivalent of having a man page.

--Ted



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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Benjamin Drung]

Am Donnerstag, den 14.04.2011, 12:39 -0500 schrieb Ted Gould:
> On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 09:49 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > Unless it's a package developed specifically for Ubuntu, it's really not a 
> > bug 
> > in the package from an upstream perspective.  Some upstreams will choose to 
> > support Ubuntu specific requirements and others won't.  For those that 
> > don't, 
> > either users will lose out on functionality or we'll have to develop and 
> > maintain Ubuntu specific patches.  
> > 
> > I doubt it's supportable to deal with Ubuntu patches for all the relevant 
> > Universe packages.  We also know there are some important applicaitons that 
> > can't/won't support the migration, so it's either live with a legacy 
> > notification area or not support these packages.  I suspect that, in the 
> > interest of giving the users fully functional applications we'll come down 
> > on 
> > the side of supporting the notification area for these packages.  It makes 
> > sense to me, given that, just to plan on supporting it generally for 
> > applications that use it.
> 
> I hope that one day we can get to the point of having UI requirements on
> applications within the Ubuntu process similar to the security
> requirements that exist with an MIR today.
> 
> So, for instance a package couldn't be in the Ubuntu archive:
>   * if it required the system tray
>   * didn't support localization
>   * didn't have basic accessibility support
>   * doesn't provide any user documentation
>   * uses it's own notification system instead of the FD.o one

Do you really want to reject those package if they do not meet the
criteria above? I think everything (complying to the DFSG) should be
accepted in universe. Having those restrictions for packages in main
would be fine.

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, April 14, 2011 01:39:43 PM Ted Gould wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 09:49 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > Unless it's a package developed specifically for Ubuntu, it's really not
> > a bug in the package from an upstream perspective.  Some upstreams will
> > choose to support Ubuntu specific requirements and others won't.  For
> > those that don't, either users will lose out on functionality or we'll
> > have to develop and maintain Ubuntu specific patches.
> > 
> > I doubt it's supportable to deal with Ubuntu patches for all the relevant
> > Universe packages.  We also know there are some important applicaitons
> > that can't/won't support the migration, so it's either live with a
> > legacy notification area or not support these packages.  I suspect that,
> > in the interest of giving the users fully functional applications we'll
> > come down on the side of supporting the notification area for these
> > packages.  It makes sense to me, given that, just to plan on supporting
> > it generally for applications that use it.
> 
> I hope that one day we can get to the point of having UI requirements on
> applications within the Ubuntu process similar to the security
> requirements that exist with an MIR today.
> 
> So, for instance a package couldn't be in the Ubuntu archive:
>   * if it required the system tray
>   * didn't support localization
>   * didn't have basic accessibility support
>   * doesn't provide any user documentation
>   * uses it's own notification system instead of the FD.o one
> 
> I think part of making the overall Ubuntu experience better is
> increasing the quality of all applications we ship, and one way to do
> that is by increasing our own standards.  Of course, we're a ways away
> from this right now, but I think looking in this direction is helpful.
> 
>   --Ted

Broad upstream support for Ubuntu's preferred technologies is a prerequisite 
to this.  I agree it's a good goal, but I think it's premature to be breaking 
UX for packages that don't support Ubuntu's preferences.

Scott K

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Ted Gould]

On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 09:49 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> Unless it's a package developed specifically for Ubuntu, it's really not a 
> bug 
> in the package from an upstream perspective.  Some upstreams will choose to 
> support Ubuntu specific requirements and others won't.  For those that don't, 
> either users will lose out on functionality or we'll have to develop and 
> maintain Ubuntu specific patches.  
> 
> I doubt it's supportable to deal with Ubuntu patches for all the relevant 
> Universe packages.  We also know there are some important applicaitons that 
> can't/won't support the migration, so it's either live with a legacy 
> notification area or not support these packages.  I suspect that, in the 
> interest of giving the users fully functional applications we'll come down on 
> the side of supporting the notification area for these packages.  It makes 
> sense to me, given that, just to plan on supporting it generally for 
> applications that use it.

I hope that one day we can get to the point of having UI requirements on
applications within the Ubuntu process similar to the security
requirements that exist with an MIR today.

So, for instance a package couldn't be in the Ubuntu archive:
  * if it required the system tray
  * didn't support localization
  * didn't have basic accessibility support
  * doesn't provide any user documentation
  * uses it's own notification system instead of the FD.o one

I think part of making the overall Ubuntu experience better is
increasing the quality of all applications we ship, and one way to do
that is by increasing our own standards.  Of course, we're a ways away
from this right now, but I think looking in this direction is helpful.

--Ted



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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Mackenzie Morgan]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Scott Kitterman  wrote:
> Unless it's a package developed specifically for Ubuntu, it's really not a bug
> in the package from an upstream perspective.  Some upstreams will choose to
> support Ubuntu specific requirements and others won't.  For those that don't,
> either users will lose out on functionality or we'll have to develop and
> maintain Ubuntu specific patches.
>
> I doubt it's supportable to deal with Ubuntu patches for all the relevant
> Universe packages.  We also know there are some important applicaitons that
> can't/won't support the migration, so it's either live with a legacy
> notification area or not support these packages.  I suspect that, in the
> interest of giving the users fully functional applications we'll come down on
> the side of supporting the notification area for these packages.  It makes
> sense to me, given that, just to plan on supporting it generally for
> applications that use it.

I saw a complaint about Dropbox & Keepass yesterday
http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2011/04/13/%23ubuntu+1.html#t19:28
I haven't tried Skype, but seeing as it's proprietary (Dropbox too, I
think?) I doubt they'd modify to fit the indicators

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Barry Warsaw]

On Apr 14, 2011, at 09:49 AM, Scott Kitterman wrote:

>Unless it's a package developed specifically for Ubuntu, it's really not a
>bug in the package from an upstream perspective.  Some upstreams will choose
>to support Ubuntu specific requirements and others won't.  For those that
>don't, either users will lose out on functionality or we'll have to develop
>and maintain Ubuntu specific patches.

I think this is a really important perspective to maintain, and not just in
this specific case.  We want to innovate in Ubuntu and encourage apps and
tools to support those Ubuntu innovations.  From an upstream's perspective
though, Ubuntu is often just one of many platforms they have to support.
Sometimes they'll make a special case for a particular platform (e.g. Windows
or OS X), but it can be a tougher decision to support a special case of a
special case (i.e. Linux -> Ubuntu).

I encountered a similar situation recently with the impact of multiarch on
upstream Python, an issue I'll write more about later.  But in those cases
where we are innovating and encouraging upstream adoption, I think we need to
do more to better communicate those changes, and provide longer periods of
compatibility, or commit to developing and carrying Ubuntu specific changes
for a potentially long time.  It's a difficult balance between pushing things
forward and maintaining a good and consistent user experience.

Cheers,
-Barry


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Martin Pitt]

Scott Kitterman [2011-04-14  9:49 -0400]:
> Unless it's a package developed specifically for Ubuntu, it's really not a 
> bug 
> in the package from an upstream perspective.

To the contrary. GtkStatusIcon is an official API from GTK, so people
have every right to use it; we can hardly claim that it's a bug
(although we have good reason to not recommend using it, of course).

As I now kept saying for many times, as long as we don't get the
indicator concept adopted upstream in GNOME/GTK (e. g. dropping the
GtkStatusIcon in GTK 4), I don't see us having a good rationale for
completely disabling them.

> I doubt it's supportable to deal with Ubuntu patches for all the
> relevant Universe packages.

Right, but that's not even everything. We are encouraging app
developers to build software for Ubuntu using Gtk or Qt, and there's a
lot of third-party software which should also work well on Ubuntu as
well. Why did we make a concession for Skype and Java, but not for
others?

Martin
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Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, April 14, 2011 09:13:39 AM Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> John Johansen wrote on 11/04/11 01:00:
> > On 04/09/2011 12:21 AM, Allison Randal wrote:
> >> On 04/07/2011 11:52 PM, Martin Pitt wrote:
> >>> If this is a major issue, then frankly I'd rather just remove the
> >>> whitelist and allow all old-style systray applications than dropping
> >>> Unity by default completely.
> 
> We've already done that. Now we're moving to the next step.
> 
> >> Yup, holding the vision for the future while addressing practical
> >> concerns doesn't have to be all-or-nothing, black-or-white.
> 
> It's not all or nothing -- it's been a very gradual change.
> 
> In April 2010, we announced that we would be retiring the notification
> area in Ubuntu 11.04.
> 
> In 10.04 and 10.10, Ubuntu allowed both notification area items and
> application indicator items.
> 
> In 11.04, Unity reimplemented the notification area with a whitelist, a
> whitelist that is longer than we originally intended.
> 
> In 11.10, if people have time to work on fixes for HPLIP and Mumble,
> we'll be able to shrink the whitelist. (And by then we'll have a real
> developer site, where ISVs can more easily find information about
> application indicators and other Ubuntu APIs.)
> 
> > +1 its enough of a problem that some family members won't be making
> > the switch to unity.
> 
> Can you be specific? Have you reported bugs on the applications?

Unless it's a package developed specifically for Ubuntu, it's really not a bug 
in the package from an upstream perspective.  Some upstreams will choose to 
support Ubuntu specific requirements and others won't.  For those that don't, 
either users will lose out on functionality or we'll have to develop and 
maintain Ubuntu specific patches.  

I doubt it's supportable to deal with Ubuntu patches for all the relevant 
Universe packages.  We also know there are some important applicaitons that 
can't/won't support the migration, so it's either live with a legacy 
notification area or not support these packages.  I suspect that, in the 
interest of giving the users fully functional applications we'll come down on 
the side of supporting the notification area for these packages.  It makes 
sense to me, given that, just to plan on supporting it generally for 
applications that use it.

Scott K

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

John Johansen wrote on 11/04/11 01:00:
>
> On 04/09/2011 12:21 AM, Allison Randal wrote:
>>
>> On 04/07/2011 11:52 PM, Martin Pitt wrote:
>>>
>>> If this is a major issue, then frankly I'd rather just remove the
>>> whitelist and allow all old-style systray applications than dropping
>>> Unity by default completely.

We've already done that. Now we're moving to the next step.

>> Yup, holding the vision for the future while addressing practical
>> concerns doesn't have to be all-or-nothing, black-or-white.

It's not all or nothing -- it's been a very gradual change.

In April 2010, we announced that we would be retiring the notification
area in Ubuntu 11.04.

In 10.04 and 10.10, Ubuntu allowed both notification area items and
application indicator items.

In 11.04, Unity reimplemented the notification area with a whitelist, a
whitelist that is longer than we originally intended.

In 11.10, if people have time to work on fixes for HPLIP and Mumble,
we'll be able to shrink the whitelist. (And by then we'll have a real
developer site, where ISVs can more easily find information about
application indicators and other Ubuntu APIs.)

> +1 its enough of a problem that some family members won't be making
> the switch to unity.

Can you be specific? Have you reported bugs on the applications?

- -- 
mpt
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Ahmed Kamal]

On 04/09/2011 11:07 AM, Timo Jyrinki wrote:

  I mostly run everything
full screen, and most of the time I don't use Unity to switch between
windows at least yet - I use either alt-tab (somewhat annoyingly slow)
Hi, I have to say I'm an alt+tab person too, and indeed it is too slow 
for my taste (GeForce 8400M GS with closed driver). I cannot help but 
feel annoyed everytime I alt+tab between windows. Would be great if we 
can have a wiki page mentioning some optimizations to perhaps trade some 
graphical sugar, for better performance.


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Martin Owens]

On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 04:22 -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> I think it's the height of arrogance for us to tell a user that we're
> going to deliberately break his application because it wasn't updated
> to
> use our new indicator library. 

We tell users all the time that we've broken their windows application
by not implementing any windows apis. No guarantees.

So, do we guarantee completely that gnome 2.x apps will function in
Unity? If we do, then we should support the entire API (somehow),
otherwise we be honest and say we support a major subset which may mean
your app won't work completely.

It can hardly be arrogance so long as we're honest about what we
support.

Martin Owens


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Thomas Novin]

On Sat, 2011-04-09 at 00:21 -0700, Allison Randal wrote:
>  Along those 
> same lines, another possibility might be Unity by default on the live CD 
> and on all fresh installs (so the first experience is the modern and 
> visionary future), but to make the choice more explicitly obvious during 
> an update (so existing users feel empowered by choice, rather than 
> surprised by change).

+100, very good idea. I thought that Ubuntu was very much about choice
(maybe not so much after I was forced to have all window-controls on the
left side and not the right). Another bad example of something that was
forced upon the users.

Rgds//Thomas



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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Scott Ritchie]

On 04/11/2011 06:26 AM, Martin Owens wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 04:22 -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote:
>> I think it's the height of arrogance for us to tell a user that we're
>> going to deliberately break his application because it wasn't updated
>> to
>> use our new indicator library.
>
> We tell users all the time that we've broken their windows application
> by not implementing any windows apis. No guarantees.
>

The difference here is their application worked on a previous version of
Ubuntu.  Regressions for current users are worse than other kinds of
problems.

> So, do we guarantee completely that gnome 2.x apps will function in
> Unity? If we do, then we should support the entire API (somehow),
> otherwise we be honest and say we support a major subset which may mean
> your app won't work completely.
>
> It can hardly be arrogance so long as we're honest about what we
> support.
>
> Martin Owens
>

There's a difference between supporting something and not intentionally
breaking it.

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Scott Ritchie]

On 04/07/2011 11:52 PM, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Rick Spencer [2011-04-07 18:38 -0700]:
>> 1. There are key feature regressions, for example, there is no systray
>> support for many important applications.
> 
> For the record, this is currently purely a design decision, not a
> technical problem. Unity does have a systray, but most applications
> are not allowed to use it. The current exception list is AFAIR Java
> applications, Skype, and Mumble.
> 
> If this is a major issue, then frankly I'd rather just remove the
> whitelist and allow all old-style systray applications than dropping
> Unity by default completely.
> 
> Martin

I think it's the height of arrogance for us to tell a user that we're
going to deliberately break his application because it wasn't updated to
use our new indicator library.  "Still working the way it used to" is a
reasonable fall back.


Yes, there may be a political benefit to the white list as it will
increase the pressure for applications to change, but in the meantime
we'll have deliberately introduced a regression.  I can't see how that
would be a good thing.

Scott Ritchie

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[John Johansen]

On 04/09/2011 12:21 AM, Allison Randal wrote:
> On 04/07/2011 11:52 PM, Martin Pitt wrote:
>>
>> If this is a major issue, then frankly I'd rather just remove the
>> whitelist and allow all old-style systray applications than dropping
>> Unity by default completely.
> 
> Yup, holding the vision for the future while addressing practical
> concerns doesn't have to be all-or-nothing, black-or-white.
>
+1 its enough of a problem that some family members won't be making
the switch to unity.


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Neil Jagdish Patel]

On Fri, 2011-04-08 at 16:15 +0200, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Neil Jagdish Patel [2011-04-08 11:38 +0100]:
> > I'll be looking into this, I believe it's because we needlessly
> > initialise the place-daemons during log-in.
> 
> Does that include zeitgeist? As a Python program, it has a pretty heavy
> impact on the login sequence. In previous releases we tried to keep it
> out of the critical path, by delaying sytem-config-printer by 30
> seconds (and we didn't have any other Python stuff during boot).

Right, exactly. I need to be careful about not breaking random things
but it's a lot of win and I believe it's a safe change overall.

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Desktop Experience Team
Canonical
27 Floor, Millbank Tower
London SW1P 4QP
Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings
www.canonical.com



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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Timo Jyrinki]

2011/4/8 Timo Jyrinki :
> There are a lot of bugs and lack of features (and many have been fixed
> already as well) and the performance is quite bad in parts, but those
> are not as serious as a) crashers and potentially b) accessibility and
> lack of any help.

Just reflecting on the more recent posts, I'm using Unity on my work
machine, but I do have only 1280x1024 (or 1400x900, depending on if I
use internal or external display) resolution. I mostly run everything
full screen, and most of the time I don't use Unity to switch between
windows at least yet - I use either alt-tab (somewhat annoyingly slow)
or compiz's scale plugin which I have bound to lower right corner of
the screen (works pretty nicely for me).

As for "what I say to others" factor, I (and Ubuntu Finland website as
decided by us already around 10.10 time) continue recommending Ubuntu
10.04.2 LTS for everyone. I don't believe users should generally
install a non-LTS Ubuntu, even with the caveat of not the newest
hardware support. 18 months of security support and therefore need to
upgrade N number of times to get to the next LTS is too much for many,
since the upgrade is still something of a hassle at times, regressions
appear et cetera. Unity being still maturing is just one factor that
contributes to this, but I wouldn't have any problem recommending
12.04 LTS with Unity to everyone, since it's going to be "ok" already
in 11.04 (and fabulous effort / re-write since 10.10) it's a piece of
cake to believe it keeps improving. Not that I would have any problem
with gnome-shell either, it's becoming great nowadays as well.

I know that as a power user I'm from the more "adjusts to the
environment" part of scale. I don't need to keep doing the way I've
been doing before, and I usually stick to quite near the shipping
defaults. I did have focus follows mouse though, which I disabled
since it worked so poorly with Unity :P Of course I wouldn't keep
using Unity if it hadn't improved in the last month like it has, but
the application launching via Super key or Alt-F2 really starts to
work now, better than ever in GNOME 2. Still too laggy and does not
always "just work", but most of the time it's neat.

-Timo

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Raphael Hertzog]

On Fri, 08 Apr 2011, Dave Morley wrote:
> We now have the blue Ubuntu indicator when an application requires
> viewing so I don't particularly see not having an indicator as an issue
> as long as the application icon shows up in the app launcher.  If we
> went with gnome 3.0 people would have the same complaint it's a new
> desktop shell get over it.

This is not true, I'm running the Gnome Shell right now and the
supplementary systray icons that are not integrated in the top panel do
appear in the bottom panel ("messaging tray").

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Follow my Debian News ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.com (English)
  ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.fr (Français)

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Jorge O. Castro]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 10:47 PM, Martin Owens  wrote:
> But what is available isn't classic ubuntu gnome... at least not in
> testing so far:

Seb128 has fixed this, the Classic GNOME in Natty as of yesterdayish
is now what you'd think "Classic" should be.

For people who prefer classic they'll get almost the same desktop they
had in 10.10; traditional 3 entry GNOME menu and no appmenu.

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Allison Randal]

On 04/07/2011 11:52 PM, Martin Pitt wrote:


If this is a major issue, then frankly I'd rather just remove the
whitelist and allow all old-style systray applications than dropping
Unity by default completely.


Yup, holding the vision for the future while addressing practical 
concerns doesn't have to be all-or-nothing, black-or-white. Along those 
same lines, another possibility might be Unity by default on the live CD 
and on all fresh installs (so the first experience is the modern and 
visionary future), but to make the choice more explicitly obvious during 
an update (so existing users feel empowered by choice, rather than 
surprised by change).


Allison

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Kees Cook]

Hi Rick,

On Thu, Apr 07, 2011 at 06:38:27PM -0700, Rick Spencer wrote:
> Back at UDS for 11.04 in Orlando, Mark set the goal of using Unity by
> default on the Ubutu desktop. Given the current course of development,
> it appears that we are going to achieve this goal, and Unity will stay
> the default for 11.04.

Before anything else, I want to say that everyone working on Unity has
been rocking, and their efforts are to be applauded. I hope they will
forgive me for the rest of this email. :P

I was specifically asked to re-try Unity for today. I want to say up
front that I don't really see myself as Unity's target audience, and I have
had long-term problems with compiz's usability vs how I want to work.
Regardless, this is my report. :)

I had to finish my Patch Pilot shift first, but then spent the afternoon
with Unity (and more frustratingly, compiz). Compared to earlier in the
devel cycle, things are greatly improved from my perspective. But then I
was fighting Intel driver regressions and plenty of other problems beyond
just unity and compiz. At the time, compiz crashed every 5 minutes,
and I couldn't go more than 30 minutes of this without just giving up
so I could actually get work done.

This afternoon, compiz only crashed twice, and I was able to use Unity
for a few hours (most of the time spent filing bugs, see below). I
am still using Unity at the moment, but bug 755156 has gotten so bad,
I may have to go back to metacity soon.

I still find it alarming that compiz crashes at all. I do not remember
metacity crashing on me in several years, for example.

I've previously opened a lot of bugs against compiz (most still open),
so I was nervous to really dive into this and document my last few
hours. Here are my notes, along with my crashes...


- window resizing does not include window size information (especially
  critical for terminal geometry sizes)
  - workaround: ccsm / Utility / Resize Info (enable)
- clicking this option crashed compiz (filed as LP: #755167)
- apport did not pop up
  - is the notifier applet missing?
  - if so, how will people get security updates?
- cannot reproduce crash

- "unity --reset" does not reset themes (had to select Ambience manually to
  have a sane-looking indicator area).

- cannot pick minimized applications out of launcher without 2 clicks in
  very separate screen locations
  - old interface: window switcher click for list, move slightly to desired
window title, click again, done.
  - no visibility of window titles at all, actually

- right-click on launcher produces popup that could not be interacted with
  - problem went away for no reason
  - cannot reproduce
  - did not file bug

- right-click on launcher disables auto-hide. clicking other places outside
  the launcher does not close the pop-up.
  - problem went away for no reason
  - cannot reproduce
  - did not file bug

- crashed when clicking launcher for Terminator while Terminators were running
  - all windows relocated the width of the top panel lower on unity restart
  - apport still did not pop up
  - filed mine as LP: #755146
- 7 other identical crashes
  - cannot reproduce crash

- focus-follows mouse setting has no effect on launcher autohide speed
  - did not file bug

- launcher autohides after raising a window even if mouse is still on it
  - did not file bug

- desktop items are shifted right by the width of the launcher and cannot
  be moved back into position (dragging them causes the launcher to appear!)
  - didn't file, suspect this is by design

- alt-tab is a disaster of sluggish responsiveness and frustrating timing
  (my long-standing objection to the compiz task switcher...)
  - best approximation of the snappy and responsive metacity-like alt-tabbing:
- static application switcher
behavior
popup window delay = 0
speed = 50
timestep = 0.1
appearance
opacity = 100
highlight mode = show rectangle
  - cannot find a way to get rid of the center window "preview" animations :(

- focus-follows mouse happens after an alt-tab, defocusing selected window,
  even when not using mouse, but only some times, making me crazy
  - filed as LP: #755156 with video of behavior

- windows disappear while dragging at/in the top panel, firefox stops rendering
  and performs freaky window clipping
  - reported as LP: #755152 with video of behavior

- interacting with some fullscreen apps (xine) triggers inconsistent
  launcher unhiding
  - reported as LP: #755160 with video of behavior


Marc Deslauriers is trying to convince me that focus-follows-mouse is evil,
but since I'm neither using a touch-screen nor a touch-pad, I can't agree.
Until I see something as convincing as this[1], I'll keep using it. :)

Thanks!

-Kees

[1] http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Martin Pitt]

Jorge O. Castro [2011-04-07 22:00 -0400]:
> We've been transitioning since 10.04 now so I don't think this should
> be attributed to Unity entirely, we could have easily run into this by
> not shipping the notification area in classic mode.

Well, we can always break things harder, but IMHO this is a battle
which we aren't going to win until/unless we actually get indicators
landed upstream...

Martin
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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Martin Pitt]

Neil Jagdish Patel [2011-04-08 11:38 +0100]:
> I'll be looking into this, I believe it's because we needlessly
> initialise the place-daemons during log-in.

Does that include zeitgeist? As a Python program, it has a pretty heavy
impact on the login sequence. In previous releases we tried to keep it
out of the critical path, by delaying sytem-config-printer by 30
seconds (and we didn't have any other Python stuff during boot).

Martin
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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Neil Jagdish Patel]

Hi,

On Fri, 2011-04-08 at 11:13 +0300, Timo Jyrinki wrote:
> 2011/4/8 Martin Pitt :
> > I couldn't have believed it even two months ago still, but today I
> > feel the same. When I switch back to classic GNOME it feels inferior
> > now; I'm particularly missing the super-fast keyboard
> > shortcuts/search/navigation and bigger screen real estate.
> 
> I have started to like Unity a lot, at least on a though level and
> also seeing in practice that it's really improving. The biggest issues
> have been that unity has been crashing for me all the time. Today is
> actually the first day that unity/compiz didn't crash within a minute
> of logging in when alt-tabbing or something similar (then it usually
> took longer time before it crashed the next time). Fingers crossed
> that unity 3.8.4 is now actually more stable in real use - same was
> said about 3.8.2. If it stays for a day of work without crashing,
> that's a really good accomplishment compared to before.

3.8.4 should be much, much more stable, especially if you're on a 64-bit
system. The entire team is concentrated on crashers and I think we'll
have a very stable Unity by hard-freeze.

> Besides fixing crashers I really would see need for more accessibility
> support and help. I don't know how to access eg. indicators or system
> menu from keyboard, which is quite essential for me even without
> disabilities, but for people with disabilities I believe the
> accessibility in general is relatively poor at the moment. gnome-shell
> already has a lot of a11y stuff integrated in 3.0 (considering it's
> the first stable release), and Ubuntu with accessibility as one of the
> core Ubuntu philosophy items should have as well. Of course, by 12.04
> LTS at least.

Both the panel and the launcher have a11y support but we really wanted
to achieve more in this area this cycle but fell a bit short with the
Dash. We do have keyboard shortcuts to access the different components:

F10 - Opens first available menu in Panel and then left/right arrows let
you move between all the menus on the panel
Alt+F1 - Focuses the launcher and allows you to keyboard-navigate the
icons and also navigate the Quicklists.
Super - Opens the Dash

> For 11.10, probably something should be done about the logging in
> time, with is terrible at least with a traditional spinning, encrypted
> disk, compared to normal Gnome. Weirdly sometimes I saw a pretty fast
> logging in even after reboot, but normally it's 30s+ from gdm to
> desktop. Something is seriously churning the hard disk with seeks,
> possibly something that only occurs with specific conditions.

I'll be looking into this, I believe it's because we needlessly
initialise the place-daemons during log-in.

Regards,

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Desktop Experience Team
Canonical
27 Floor, Millbank Tower
London SW1P 4QP
Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings
www.canonical.com



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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Dave Morley]

On Fri, 2011-04-08 at 10:33 +0200, Philipp Kern wrote:
> Martin,
> 
> am Thu, Apr 07, 2011 at 10:47:15PM -0400 hast du folgendes geschrieben:
> > On Thu, 2011-04-07 at 18:38 -0700, Rick Spencer wrote:
> > > Note that there are some arguments for changing the default from Unity
> > > to "classic' GNOME: 
> > But what is available isn't classic ubuntu gnome... at least not in
> > testing so far:
> > 
> > - Windows menus
> > + Global menus
> > - Ubuntu "Menu bar" widget
> > + GNOME "Main Menu" widget
> 
> what I find really annoying is the lack of the default GNOME applets which are
> even advertised in the gnome-applets package description.  Where has the 
> volume
> applet gone?  Yes, it was replaced by indicators, but can we please get it 
> back
> at least manually?
> 
> When I deactivate/remove the indicators I get some back in the systray (like 
> nm
> and bluetooth) after re-login but they all miss their icons.  (The icon is
> replaced by the icon missing symbol.)
> 
> (And yes, given that it isn't my laptop that's influenced by Canonical's 
> design
> decisions, I didn't report those as bugs yet.)
> 
> Some instructional page on the wiki how to revert to classic GNOME would be
> helpful, too.
> 
> Kind regards
> Philipp Kern

Have Gnome not done away with the notification area in 3.0 also in which
case how do their apps handle not having the notification area.

We now have the blue Ubuntu indicator when an application requires
viewing so I don't particularly see not having an indicator as an issue
as long as the application icon shows up in the app launcher.  If we
went with gnome 3.0 people would have the same complaint it's a new
desktop shell get over it.

I have 2 boxes that I run all day my laptop on Natty Unity and my main
desktop on maverick,  I keep wondering where the launcher is on
maverick, as I have the key application setup there that I use all day.

I can't wait to upgrade my main desktop but that won't be till stable is
released.
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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[vila]

> Martin Pitt  writes:

> Alex Launi [2011-04-07 23:46 -0400]:
>> I can honestly say that when I am not in a unity environment, I don't 
feel
>> at home. 

> I couldn't have believed it even two months ago still, but today I
> feel the same. When I switch back to classic GNOME it feels inferior
> now; I'm particularly missing the super-fast keyboard
> shortcuts/search/navigation and bigger screen real estate.

You weren't using Gnome Do don't you ?

But yes, even if I haven't yet been able to use Unity much, from my
tests, I'm eager to switch to it as soon as I can.

*Finally* an auto-hiding dock that works, gee, and it's not coming from
Apple ?

Kudos to the design team... is all I can say.

  Vincent

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Timo Jyrinki]

2011/4/8 Neil Jagdish Patel :
> 3.8.4 should be much, much more stable, especially if you're on a 64-bit
> system. The entire team is concentrated on crashers and I think we'll
> have a very stable Unity by hard-freeze.

Sounds good, and yes I've 64-bit which explains a bit.

> F10 - Opens first available menu in Panel and then left/right arrows let
> you move between all the menus on the panel
> Alt+F1 - Focuses the launcher and allows you to keyboard-navigate the
> icons and also navigate the Quicklists.
> Super - Opens the Dash

Yippee! Super and Alt+F2 I had realized (and Alt+F2 was great to have
when it appeared and I noticed it from changelog), F10 and Alt+F1 were
news to me and they seem to work great at the first sight (except when
in calendar, where it seems there is zero way of getting out with
keyboard only - I will check if there is a bug for that).

The keyboard usability just got a huge boost for me. This illustrates
though somewhat the problem of finding these out and the lack of any
built-in Help.

-Timo

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Philipp Kern]

On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 10:56:48AM +0100, Dave Morley wrote:
> We now have the blue Ubuntu indicator when an application requires
> viewing so I don't particularly see not having an indicator as an issue
> as long as the application icon shows up in the app launcher.  If we
> went with gnome 3.0 people would have the same complaint it's a new
> desktop shell get over it.

As you replied to my mail:  I deconfigured all of Unity as far as possible.
Unity still uses GNOME 2 as its base but it seems that some changes broke the
classical GNOME, which is all I want to mention.

(And I was asked to get rid of Unity, it wasn't my decision neither.  The whole
"you won't be able to configure indicators in a meaningful way" seems to annoy
people, too.)

Kind regards
Philipp Kern


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Dave Walker]

On 08/04/11 04:46, Alex Launi wrote:
I can honestly say that when I am not in a unity environment, I don't 
feel at home. I bounce back and forth between ubuntu and osx, and when 
nvidia was broken, and when I'm in osx, I often find myself trying to 
4 finger slide, throwing my mouse to 0,0, tapping super, and generally 
evoking unity idioms. unity has very quickly made itself a 
*very* natural part of my workflow and i couldn't imagine working 
without it any more.


It's leagues beyond anything I've ever used, and I am massively 
impressed with what we've created.



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I would like to echo this point aswell.  Increasingly, when using an 
Android phone - I'm finding that not having a whizzy hotkey to open a 
text input area, then be able to type the app name is frustrating.


The area I am lacking in Unity is following the correct terminology, and 
ability to discover some of the hotkey shortcuts.  The reliability has 
increased massively within the last two weeks.


Additionally, shipping this as default will help uncover more issues 
which will continue to become unresolved until it does hit the masses.  
If Beta 2 does yield some negative feedback, perhaps adding some 
notification on first login how to revert back to Classic desktop might 
help satisfy those that struggle with the conversion.


Kind Regards,
Dave Walker
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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Philipp Kern]

Martin,

am Thu, Apr 07, 2011 at 10:47:15PM -0400 hast du folgendes geschrieben:
> On Thu, 2011-04-07 at 18:38 -0700, Rick Spencer wrote:
> > Note that there are some arguments for changing the default from Unity
> > to "classic' GNOME: 
> But what is available isn't classic ubuntu gnome... at least not in
> testing so far:
> 
> - Windows menus
> + Global menus
> - Ubuntu "Menu bar" widget
> + GNOME "Main Menu" widget

what I find really annoying is the lack of the default GNOME applets which are
even advertised in the gnome-applets package description.  Where has the volume
applet gone?  Yes, it was replaced by indicators, but can we please get it back
at least manually?

When I deactivate/remove the indicators I get some back in the systray (like nm
and bluetooth) after re-login but they all miss their icons.  (The icon is
replaced by the icon missing symbol.)

(And yes, given that it isn't my laptop that's influenced by Canonical's design
decisions, I didn't report those as bugs yet.)

Some instructional page on the wiki how to revert to classic GNOME would be
helpful, too.

Kind regards
Philipp Kern


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Timo Jyrinki]

2011/4/8 Martin Pitt :
> I couldn't have believed it even two months ago still, but today I
> feel the same. When I switch back to classic GNOME it feels inferior
> now; I'm particularly missing the super-fast keyboard
> shortcuts/search/navigation and bigger screen real estate.

I have started to like Unity a lot, at least on a though level and
also seeing in practice that it's really improving. The biggest issues
have been that unity has been crashing for me all the time. Today is
actually the first day that unity/compiz didn't crash within a minute
of logging in when alt-tabbing or something similar (then it usually
took longer time before it crashed the next time). Fingers crossed
that unity 3.8.4 is now actually more stable in real use - same was
said about 3.8.2. If it stays for a day of work without crashing,
that's a really good accomplishment compared to before.

Besides fixing crashers I really would see need for more accessibility
support and help. I don't know how to access eg. indicators or system
menu from keyboard, which is quite essential for me even without
disabilities, but for people with disabilities I believe the
accessibility in general is relatively poor at the moment. gnome-shell
already has a lot of a11y stuff integrated in 3.0 (considering it's
the first stable release), and Ubuntu with accessibility as one of the
core Ubuntu philosophy items should have as well. Of course, by 12.04
LTS at least.

There are a lot of bugs and lack of features (and many have been fixed
already as well) and the performance is quite bad in parts, but those
are not as serious as a) crashers and potentially b) accessibility and
lack of any help.

For 11.10, probably something should be done about the logging in
time, with is terrible at least with a traditional spinning, encrypted
disk, compared to normal Gnome. Weirdly sometimes I saw a pretty fast
logging in even after reboot, but normally it's 30s+ from gdm to
desktop. Something is seriously churning the hard disk with seeks,
possibly something that only occurs with specific conditions.

-Timo

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Martin Owens]

On Thu, 2011-04-07 at 18:38 -0700, Rick Spencer wrote:
> Note that there are some arguments for changing the default from Unity
> to "classic' GNOME: 

But what is available isn't classic ubuntu gnome... at least not in
testing so far:

- Windows menus
+ Global menus
- Ubuntu "Menu bar" widget
+ GNOME "Main Menu" widget

Are the issues with nvidia looking like they will be resolved? I don't
know how many people are effected but I can't imagine a happy people if
1/3rd of users are forced into classic, especially since Unity rocks so
much.

Martin,


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Brian Curtis]

Hi all,

I think I can offer some opinions on this without repeating what
others say too much.

I want to compare this to the decision a few releases ago to make
Empathy the default IM client in Ubuntu.  Then why I think Unity
should become the default desktop session and not classic GNOME.

Pidgin was the running favorite, there were a ton of fans of the
client, people were really liking the application and along came the
rookie Empathy, which at that point few had heard about, but was a
very good candidate based on the amount of time their devs had put
into the client and the potential of the software.

Once the switch was officially made, the backlash in bug reports and
in the social media was harsh, and rude at times.  Look where that
client has come to this point since we made it default.  I sincerely
believe (and the devs have expressed the same sentiment) that it
wouldn't be as good as it is now if it weren't for that decision and
amount of attention.

Not to digress any further, I feel that Unity will thrive in the same
environment.  If we delay it any further then we are keeping some
valuable attention from its development.  There will be backlashes, in
bug reports, in the social media.  With the amount of attention and
use it will get by being default, it will grow fast.

It may appear to be a couple steps back, but I think in the end we
will find that Unity as the default desktop environment for 11.04 will
be a gigantic leap forward later on.

Thanks for all of your time,

~Brian

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 9:38 PM, Rick Spencer  wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Back at UDS for 11.04 in Orlando, Mark set the goal of using Unity by
> default on the Ubutu desktop. Given the current course of development,
> it appears that we are going to achieve this goal, and Unity will stay
> the default for 11.04.
>
> I'm following up on this list at the suggestion of the Tech Board to
> give folks a chance to respond or escelate any concerns.
>
> Note that there are some arguments for changing the default from Unity
> to "classic' GNOME:
> 1. There are key feature regressions, for example, there is no systray
> support for many important applications.
> 2. There are usability problems, for example, settings are hard to find,
> the launcher icons behave differently when you click on the trash can
> versus the home folder launcher, it's hard to find a categorized view of
> applications, searches do not always turn up expected results.
> 3. We are coming in too hot, there are too many crashers on some
> hardware and the final product will be buggy.
>
> I won't rebut these points myself, as I am rather striving to represent
> the viewpoints not argue against them.
>
> Representing the desktop team, Jason Warner believes that Unity will
> deliver the superior experience for most users in 11.04. I agree with
> this position and support staying the course.
>
> Cheers, Rick
>
> PS - You can reference the recent and current bug fixing efforts of the
> Unity team here:
> https://launchpad.net/unity/+milestone/3.8.4
> https://launchpad.net/unity/+milestone/3.8.6
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity
>
>
>
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>



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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Marcin Juszkiewicz]

Dnia 2011-04-07, czw o godzinie 22:00 -0400, Jorge O. Castro pisze:
> On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 9:38 PM, Rick Spencer  
> wrote:
> > 1. There are key feature regressions, for example, there is no systray
> > support for many important applications.
> 
> According to the AppIndicator Design document the notification area
> will be phased out:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CustomStatusMenuDesignGuidelines
> 
> We've been transitioning since 10.04 now so I don't think this should
> be attributed to Unity entirely, we could have easily run into this by
> not shipping the notification area in classic mode.

Good that there are other environments then default Unity/GNOME ones in
Ubuntu. From apps which I use at least two are still systray ones:
Last.Fm and PSI. I use them for years and do not want to change just
because there is no systray support.

But I also use XFCE so I should be safe from your changes ;D



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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Alex Launi]

I can honestly say that when I am not in a unity environment, I don't feel
at home. I bounce back and forth between ubuntu and osx, and when nvidia was
broken, and when I'm in osx, I often find myself trying to 4 finger slide,
throwing my mouse to 0,0, tapping super, and generally evoking unity idioms.
unity has very quickly made itself a *very* natural part of my workflow and
i couldn't imagine working without it any more.

It's leagues beyond anything I've ever used, and I am massively impressed
with what we've created.


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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Martin Pitt]

Alex Launi [2011-04-07 23:46 -0400]:
> I can honestly say that when I am not in a unity environment, I don't feel
> at home. 

I couldn't have believed it even two months ago still, but today I
feel the same. When I switch back to classic GNOME it feels inferior
now; I'm particularly missing the super-fast keyboard
shortcuts/search/navigation and bigger screen real estate.

Martin
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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Martin Pitt]

Rick Spencer [2011-04-07 18:38 -0700]:
> 1. There are key feature regressions, for example, there is no systray
> support for many important applications.

For the record, this is currently purely a design decision, not a
technical problem. Unity does have a systray, but most applications
are not allowed to use it. The current exception list is AFAIR Java
applications, Skype, and Mumble.

If this is a major issue, then frankly I'd rather just remove the
whitelist and allow all old-style systray applications than dropping
Unity by default completely.

Martin
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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, April 07, 2011 10:00:45 PM Jorge O. Castro wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 9:38 PM, Rick Spencer  
wrote:
> > 1. There are key feature regressions, for example, there is no systray
> > support for many important applications.
> 
> According to the AppIndicator Design document the notification area
> will be phased out:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CustomStatusMenuDesignGuidelines
> 
> We've been transitioning since 10.04 now so I don't think this should
> be attributed to Unity entirely, we could have easily run into this by
> not shipping the notification area in classic mode.

Ubuntu is alone, AFAIK, in deciding to do away with the notification 
area/systray (in KDE it's called the systray).  I think it's reasonably 
inevitable that there will always be packages that don't support this Ubuntu 
unique functionality.  I'm not sure if that's an argument for waiting (more 
time might yield more support) or an argument for going ahead (no matter how 
long we'll always lose some fraction of support).

It does seem relevant to this discussion however because even though removing 
the notification area could have been a classic mode problem, it's at present 
something that is tied to Unity.

Scott K

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Re: Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Jorge O. Castro]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 9:38 PM, Rick Spencer  wrote:
> 1. There are key feature regressions, for example, there is no systray
> support for many important applications.

According to the AppIndicator Design document the notification area
will be phased out:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CustomStatusMenuDesignGuidelines

We've been transitioning since 10.04 now so I don't think this should
be attributed to Unity entirely, we could have easily run into this by
not shipping the notification area in classic mode.

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