Re: Feature proposal: combined system status menu






On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Alberto Ruiz <aruiz gnome org> wrote:
Hey Allan,

first of all thanks a lot for taking the time to look into these issues

2013/4/22 Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>:
> Hi all,
>
> This is something that me, Jon and Jakub have been thinking about for
> some time, and is now at the stage where we can start to think about
> implementation. I'm proposing it as a feature for 3.10 [1].
>
> The main element of the design is to combine the sound, network,
> bluetooth, power and user menus into a single menu. This will enable
> us to resolve a number of UX issues we've encountered with the
> existing design (badness on touch, difficulties having the user name
> in the top bar, lots of complexity in some menus, like network,
> virtually none in others, like sound...).

Sorry if this goes a bit off topic, but, is the general policy now to
try to optimize for touch?

The rationale is to at least try and think about touch, because that's where the market is going. I don't know if it's a good idea or not.

There are other factors that led to the redesign. During user testing, a lot of applicants were glued to the menus in the top right and didn't really look elsewhere for features.
 
I am not sure what the criteria is with this regard and I might have
miss a public discussion about it. What are we trying to accomplish
with this whole trend towards touch? I haven't seen any successful
single UI story that works well on both touch and mouse/keyboard form
factors. Again, bear with me since I might have missed compelling
discussions about this design strategy.

I would be more than supportive if we decided to do a tablet version
of GNOME but I am slightly concerned that we are just blindly
following MS/W8 and the desire of hardware manufacturers to have
something new to ship.

I am also concerned about the message that this sends to application
developers. Should they optimize their apps for touch as well? In my
experience doing an app for a touch driven device and a kbd/pointer
one is quite a different deal.

> More details are outlined on the wiki [2]. If you do look at the
> designs, please pay particular attention to the example scenarios -
> these give a clearer idea of what the menu will actually look like.
> The designs aren't finalised yet, so comments and ideas are welcome.

My main concern while looking at the wireframes is that this would
change the fundamental way a lot of extensions work right now,
specifically I'm thinking about the MPRIS2 extension in the sound menu
that allows a very handy change of track or pause of your music which
would be a pain if done through the activities overview or the system
tray. It would be nice if we could give a heads up to the extension
developers, and also, take into account that this kind of
customization seems reasonable and critical for a certain chunk of our
user base.


> It should be said that, as with any design, there are tradeoffs here.
> There are lots of advantages to this approach (see the design page),
> but there are one or two actions that might require an extra click
> with the new design. The primary example of this is switching wifi
> networks: with the new design, this will require that you open the
> system menu, click on the wi-fi entry, and then choose the network you
> want from the control center panel (as opposed to just selecting the
> network from the menu itself).
>
> However, while switching wi-fi networks will require an extra step, I
> actually think that the the experience will be better with the new
> design. The current network menu contains a lot of information that
> isn't related to wi-fi, and isn't exactly straightforward to use - in
> many respects, the new design will be more straightforward to use,
> even if there is an extra click involved. Also, we are planning a new
> wi-fi selection dialog, which should be a big improvement in those
> situations where you are not already connected to a network.

Sounds areas worth exploring, keep up the good work guys and thanks
for sharing your plans on ddl!

--
Cheers,
Alberto Ruiz
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--
  Jasper


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