[Usability] Incorporating UI Innovations from Upstream Projects to GNOME

[Allan Caeg <allancaeg ubuntu com>]

Hello,

There's a discussion on Mozilla's Usability list ( dev-usability lists mozilla org ) entitled "Keep bar-style notifications for Firefox 4 on Linux instead of 
doorhanger notifications which breaks consistency on GNOME desktop." You can find the discussion here and the related bug report here. 

Alex Faaborg said
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 4:19 AM, Alex Faaborg <faaborg mozilla com> wrote:
> External consistency is important, but in cases where we feel we have a
> better solution to a particular interface, there is an advantage to using
> that solution (even if it is different).  We've also seen aspects of
> Firefox's UI influence the design of Gnome (most recently a discussion
> around application buttons that encapsulate the title and main commands).
> So these types of changes are more fluid and incremental than a top down
> approach where the Gnome team writes a Human Interface Guidelines rule book,
> and then every application has to blindly follow it regardless of if a
> better solution exists.
>
> The specific advantages of our new panel based system are:
>
> 1. Identifiable with low resolution peripheral vision
> 2. Easy to ignore, by clicking outside to close
> 3. Easy to bring back, since they have a persistent anchor (supporting undo
> if the user changes their mind)
> 4. Natual mapping to the site identity block that is originating the
> notification, making it clear who is asking for what (more important in the
> case of the Web, where these notifications involve permissions, and we want
> users to consider the identity of the site asking for their physical
> location, or a live feed from their webcam, etc.)
>
> -Alex

I suggest that we incorporate the UI solutions that upstream projects like Firefox come up with to achieve consistency and (of course) make the desktop experience smoother. I asked for a list of UI solutions like the doorhanger notifications so we can see how we can incorporate each of them to the desktop.

-- 
Regards,
Allan
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