Re: [Usability] [Ayatana] The Future of Window Borders, Menu Bars, and More

[Allan Caeg <allancaeg gmail com>]

Not showing the branding while the app is running may reduce cognitive load, just like what MPT said. However, there are issues with this.

Apps that are supposed to do the same things have differences that many people know or need to know.

Whenever I'm browsing, I have to know that it's Firefox, because Chrome works differently. Some keystrokes won't work on the other app, some plugins aren't present, etc. 

When more than one app of the same kind is running, they would be tagged the same way

There are cases when we open more than one web browser or music player. For example, if I want to use two different accounts on one social networking site, I would run two browsers. Not being able to identify easily which app is which would be confusing in this case.

Upstream vendors may want to keep their branding 

Some of them take their marketing so seriously that they won't even consider this. This may damage our relationship with them, and may cause them to brand their products in places that will be less fit.

This could make app launching more complicated

When I launch Firefox, I would need to look for the Web Browser, Internet Browser, or whatever window. That is confusing. It's even more complicated for other apps like Sudoko. What should I expect Sudoku to be named after launching it with whatever launcher (GNOME Main Menu, GNOME Shell, etc.)

Regards,
Allan
http://google.com/profiles/AllanCaeg
+63 927 982 0592

On Aug 10, 2010 2:05 AM, "Martin Owens" <doctormo gmail com> wrote:
> Ryan,
>
> On Mon, 2010-08-09 at 11:22 -0500, Ryan Peters wrote:
>> While browsers might not be focused on branding, that branding is
>> still
>> there. My point, however, isn't the branding, but the fact that there
>> is
>> a brand. If we treated every web browser as "web browser" or every
>> email
>> client as "email client", how would people tell the difference
>> between
>> them? Branding, with different icons and application names, helps
>> this
>> issue, and there's a healthy level of branding exposure we need to
>> find.
>> If the window borders didn't have the application title, the
>> Application
>> Menu, with the icon as well as the name (so people can more easily
>> recognize the name), fixes this problem because you can tell what
>> application you have open no matter what window is focused, its
>> contents, or what the window title is.
>
> the branding falls back down to the operating system. It's Ubuntu's
> access to facebook etc. not Chrome or Firefox.
>
> Martin.
>
>
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