Re: Feature proposal: combined system status menu

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico gnome org>]

On Mon, 2013-04-22 at 14:36 +0100, Allan Day wrote:

> The main element of the design is to combine the sound, network,
> bluetooth, power and user menus into a single menu.

The update proposal [1] lists the following items as problems, but it
doesn't say *why* they are problems.  I'll comment:

* Privacy issues with having the user's name in the top bar

Why is this a privacy concern?  If you already have someone looking over
your shoulder, they can see a lot more than your username... including
you typing passwords.

* Unsuitability of 16x16px icons on touch screens

"So make them larger" :)

Seriously, this is not just for touch screens.  Those need big targets.
But on non-touch screens, some people like my mom (whose eyesight is not
so great these days) could also benefit from bigger icons, or at least
*more contrasty* icons.  The other day she called me as she couldn't
figure out how to increase the volume.  It turns out that audio was
muted, and what gnome-shell shows in that case is a dark gray audio icon
with a tiny little "X" on its corner.

The dark gray icon (around 25% gray) has very little contrast with
respect to its surrounding black bar (0% gray).  The apparent contrast
is even less since often what you have directy below the icon is the
very-lightly-colored titlebar of a window (... with a white content
area), so the dark gray audio icon is hard to see.

Summary - maybe bigger icons, or just contrastier ones?  Use a wider top
bar for touch screens?

* Large width of items in the System Status area (including the user's
name) taking up too much space in portrait mode

How much is too much space?  Do you have a screenshot that shows the
problem?

I have a long name but fortunately a 1600 pixel-wide screen.  When I
used gnome-shell on a 1024 pixel netbook it felt a bit cramped, but it
was not a huge problem.  Maybe if the user's full name gets over a
certain percentage of the screen's width, then gnome-shell should switch
to showing just the Unix username?

Also... "just move the clock to the left" and that will give you more
space for the status area.  Here it is, roughly centered between the app
menu and the leftmost status icon.  To me it looks nicer than centered
on the screen - it's a local symmetry:

http://people.gnome.org/~federico/misc/centered.png

* Difficult to have icons in the top bar that do not have an associated
menu (eg. airplane mode)

If gnome-shell just assumes that all icons must have a menu, then this
is just an implementation detail.

* Difficult to have items in the menus that do not have an appropriate
top bar icon (eg. screen brightness)

Two questions:

1. Do we need absolutely every hardware-y parameter to be adjustable
from the top bar?  (Not trying to be confrontational here - I use the
hardware keys for screen brightness because they are there and they
work, but I use the volume icon in the shell because a) it works, unlike
the hardware keys, and b) adjusting the volume with the scrollwheel is
really nice.)

2. Instead of putting *everything* in a single menu like in the
wireframes [2], wouldn't it be better to split them into hardware-y
things and user-y things?  (I personally think the current
implementation is very clear and clean - volume things under the volume
icon, user/session things under my username.)  Putting everything in the
same menu doesn't sound like a good idea.

* Some menus essentially have one item in them (eg. battery, volume)

Why is this a problem?

(... Could we add a microphone volume slider to the volume menu?  It
would be nice to have for those awkward Skype moments.  And about the
only other time I use the Sound Preferences capplet is when I need to
boost the volume past 100% - that could very well be in the slider in
gnome-shell, I guess.)

(... If the problem of not being able to have icons without menus is
solved, then clicking the Battery icon could just take you to the power
capplet.)

* Inconsistency between lock/login screens and the session 

I wasn't even aware of the inconsistency.  

Can the lock screen simply have the username and icons on the same place
as the session?  Like this:

http://people.gnome.org/~federico/misc/lock.png

As side comments to the lock screen... I can understand having Volume
there (screensaver activates while listening to something; I still want
to be able to adjust the volume).  The battery is for "oh, the screen is
locked but I guess I should plug the laptop soon".  What is Network
there for?


Apart from all that:

I like the idea of a separate dialog to choose a wifi network.  The
current menu is just unreliable:

* "More..." sometimes makes the menu narrower, and the "leave the top
five as they are, and put the rest in a scrollable sub-menu" just looks
weird.

* If you are looking at the menu trying to decide on which AP to use,
the menu closes on you when NetworkManager refreshes the list of APs
(?).

(In general, those menus-that-can-expand-subsections seem to need
implementation love.)

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to move the Chat/No chat option to the
message tray.  It seems more closely tied to the personal status
(whether I'm available or not).  Not a strong opinion on this, though.

I do like the idea of moving the Notifications/No notifications option
to the message tray, since that is where notifications appear in the
first place.

  Federico

[1] Proposal for the new status icons:
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Guidelines/SystemStatus/#Update_Proposal

[2] Wireframes for the status icons and menus:
https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/shell/combined-system-status-menu.png