Re: [Muine] [UI CHANGES 6/6] desrt's tray icon patch (as found in ubuntu)

[Jorn Baayen <jorn openedhand com>]

To be honest I was annoyed when I discovered this patch in Ubuntu. I
tried to file a bug but their bug tracker kept crashing on me.

Muine has been designed to work with one-button mice, and that includes
the tray icon. I consider the menu the main future of the tray icon, not
the showing/hiding of the main window. Here's why:

The tray icon menu provides all functionality needed to do basic
playback management: Play/pause, skipping songs, and selecting
songs/albums to play. One does not need to pop up the main window to
perform these tasks. Therefore the primary mouse button should pop up
the thing that is most important, namely the menu. Not pop up the main
window which is unnecessary for most tasks.

Using the middle mouse button to play/pause is *rather* obscure and that
at the very least has to be removed. 

I think adding a Quit menu item is also a bad idea. The menu only
contains frequently performed actions, not every random feature in the
app, to keep the menu small and oversee-able. "Quit" is used exactly
once per session, and I therefore don't think it belongs there. (And
especially not when the main window pops up on button1)

Regarding HIG compliance; ideally we would be 100% compliant, but the
HIG is a collection of guidelines, not a bible. If a slight diversion
from the HIG makes more sense than strictly following it, I think we
should diverge. Muine is here to provide new UI ideas; not to follow
dogmas.

This patch and variants of it have been repeatedly filed for as long as
Muine has existed, and rejected just as many times. I'd be inclined to
do this once again. However, as this has been requested so often, I
leave the final call to you. Just please don't add the "Quit" menu item
and the mmb play/pause.

Thanks,

Jorn


On Sat, 2006-03-18 at 23:21 -0800, Peter Johanson wrote:
> [6/6] desrt's tray icon patch (as found in ubuntu) - Ignoring how this was
> handled (I was aware of the patch being created, but never saw it before
> ubuntu started shipping it), this creates a more "HIG behaviour" for the
> tray icon, and allows the user to keep the current behaviour by setting
> a GConf key. I'm not a fan of the new 'middle click pauses/unpauses',
> and I'm also not huge on having "Yet Another GConf key to avoid a
> configuration dialog", but do think the menu thing needs addressing in
> some manner. This patch would at least provide an OOTB experience that
> better matches that of most other applications with tray icons, and
> would still allow folks to have the old behaviour if they so desire.
> Another alternative, which may or may not be better is to create a 
> "HIGTrayIcon" plugin, and a "OldTrayIcon" (or whatever you want to call
> them), which are seperate installable plugins that have one or the other
> behaviours.
> 
-- 
OpenedHand Ltd.
http://o-hand.com/