Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour [LWN.net]

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 26, 2011 16:17 UTC (Fri) by hpro (subscriber, #74751) [Link] (17 responses)

I have never been able to understand why developers think it is a good idea to have buttons and menus hidden, and have them appear when you drag your mouse over some "magic" zone.

Yes, it is a good idea to automatically show the user a menu when he does something that will typically be followed by some other action. E.g., show a context menu with open/delete when hovering over a file. That makes sense; you probably were looking to do something to the file you pointed your mouse at.

But hiding controls and menus is a bad idea. How in earth is the user supposed to know where to look for a menu if he can not see it until he has found it!?

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 26, 2011 16:25 UTC (Fri) by danieldk (subscriber, #27876) [Link] (5 responses)

I like the general direction of Unity, and the need to save screen real estate. But I agree with this. OS X Lion also shows scrollbars only on mouse overs (or touch/wheel scrolling). It is annoying (there is no visual feedback how much you scrolled) and very unintuitive for unexperienced computer users who do not know when to expect the possibility to scroll.

Also, Ubuntu is not bluntly copying Apple here, since OS X does always show the menu (except when using full screen apps).

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 26, 2011 18:49 UTC (Fri) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link] (1 responses)

Apple copied a lot from other interfaces, they polished them to claim innovation.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 26, 2011 22:19 UTC (Fri) by hpro (subscriber, #74751) [Link]

Say what you will about Apple, but they actually seem to be the only player really going for professional GUI design based on proper HMI guidelines.

Everyone else seem to be trapped in the engineering first fallacy.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 26, 2011 23:20 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (2 responses)

Save screen real estate? 24"-ers has never been cheaper, and as opposed to many other IT investments actually do wonders for productivity.

I understand the need on small laptops when you're not at your desk, but that is a feature that perhaps could be turned on as needed -- or automatically when screen resolution gets below a threshold, if it could be done tastefully.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 8:42 UTC (Sat) by hpro (subscriber, #74751) [Link]

I agree. I actually find myself using _larger_ toolbars than I used to. I quite like having double height windows taskbar, something that essentially goes completely against this current GUI trend.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 9:02 UTC (Sat) by danieldk (subscriber, #27876) [Link]

Indeed, laptops and other mobile devices are more important than 10 years ago, that's why I understand the need.

At work I use two 24" screens, though I like cleanliness. Having huge toolbars everywhere is distracting.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 26, 2011 21:52 UTC (Fri) by ldarby (guest, #41318) [Link] (3 responses)

I agree, some of my colleagues at work use unity (for no other reason than "it's the default on the most popular distro") and it's frustrating to try to explain to them eg. in wireshark "go to the Statistics menu" and there's nothing there that says "Statistics", or I don't remember which menu is needed, and I have to say "move the mouse to the top and leave it there", so I can scan the menus, it's a total waste of time...

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 17:11 UTC (Sat) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link] (2 responses)

>and I have to say "move the mouse to the top and leave it there", so I can scan the menus, it's a total waste of time...

As long as the customer pays for the time required for the supplier to deal with it, no big deal. And for projects paid by completion percentage rather than by the hour, an "Ubuntu Surcharge" is what it takes.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 18:35 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

and what if you are not being paied to support folks?

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 19:12 UTC (Sat) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link]

>what if you are not being paied to support folks?

Everybody has their own preferences and priorities when it comes to spare time and hobbies.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 11:59 UTC (Sat) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]

I think it's called discoverability.

And many touch-based devices suck even worse at it I think.

Who would know what gesture to use and when ?

I've not yet seen one interface which would work well on all interfaces, from small touchscreen to large screen pc.

But I guess that is what makes it exciting ? ;-)

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 29, 2011 9:47 UTC (Mon) by pkolloch (subscriber, #21709) [Link] (5 responses)

+1

I like many concepts in Unity but only showing some ui elements on hover is annoying.

They reason that they want to get rid of applications menus completely, eventually. I can follow the argument here.

But hiding scroll bar controls is seriously annoying and they do not argue that they want to get rid of scroll bars, do they?

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 29, 2011 10:59 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (4 responses)

> But hiding scroll bar controls is seriously annoying and they do not argue that they want to get rid of scroll bars, do they?

Yes, they do. Scrollbars are no longer "bars" in Ubuntu. More like a thin scroll position indicator line. You could argue that a line is a bar also, but then they are not really hidden, are they? ;-)
What's hidden is the scroll manipulator or "thumb", and this is only useful for mouse interaction: In a touch device you drag the content window to scroll, and with the keyboard you simply press the direction key.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 29, 2011 17:05 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (3 responses)

> What's hidden is the scroll manipulator or "thumb", and this is only useful for mouse interaction: In a touch device you drag the content window to scroll, and with the keyboard you simply press the direction key.

I would like to point out that this form of scrolling is extremely annoying for large documents (think single-page HTML e-books). With a proper scrollbar you can go directly to any position in the document, but on a tablet with only swipe gestures you are forced to repeat the gesture, perhaps dozens of times, to achieve the same effect. The page-down and spacebar keys on keyboard are a bit easier due to auto-repeat, but are still awkward for selecting a position perhaps 50% of the way through 1,000 screens worth of plain text.

Scrollbars, including "thumbs", are just as important on touch devices as on devices with mice. Perhaps more so, in fact, given that touch devices also tend to lack keyboard-based scrolling.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 29, 2011 18:52 UTC (Mon) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (2 responses)

On the only touch system I've made significant use of (my Android phone), making a long vertical stroke makes things scroll like mad towards the appropriate end of the page, and a tap stops the scrolling.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 29, 2011 19:42 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

That is true of my device as well (a Motorola Xoom running Android 3.1). The scrolling does not continue indefinitely, however, thus the repeated gestures. It's fine for normal web pages, but lose your place in a megabyte or two of text and you'll probably wish you had a way to simply set the position from memory without scrolling linearly through the document.

Most dedicated e-book readers provide a 'go to page...' function which can substitute for a scrollbar, but most of these do not handle raw HTML files, and the built-in Chrome web browser's scrolling leaves much to be desired from an e-reader point of view.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 29, 2011 21:19 UTC (Mon) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

In some situations, my phone running Android also seems to pop up a "thumb" when you start scrolling in the normal way (e.g., in the contacts list). You can then grab the thumb and scroll arbitrarily far with a finite-sized movement. Seems like a reasonable solution in that context, though it'd be useful if it were supported by other apps like the browser, and I'm not sure I'd want it on my laptop...

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 26, 2011 17:56 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (12 responses)

Looks good. I think I am one of the few people who has used Linux for over 15 years who felt instantly comfortable (well, very quickly comfortable) with Unity in Natty. Oneiric seems to improve on it substantially. The irony is that I use it on my 17-inch 1920x1200 screen, where I hardly ever use full-screen windows and generally have several windows open; and can't get it to run on my 10-inch tablet (which runs Android, but I have a Gentoo-based XFCE in a chroot). Unity would really work well there. I hope Canonical is talking to, and working with, ARM-based tablet manufacturers.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 26, 2011 21:32 UTC (Fri) by JohnLenz (guest, #42089) [Link]

I agree with you on switching to unity easily. I think there are a lot more of us out there (the longtime users who adapted just fine) but of course we don't start banging on the keyboard in anger.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 26, 2011 21:57 UTC (Fri) by cabrilo (guest, #72372) [Link] (6 responses)

What are the advantages of Unity over, say, old Gnome or current XFCE in terms of UI if you are not pressed for space? E.g. on desktop I have a comfortable resolution, so all this space-saving tricks don't really appeal to me. Are there are any qualities that Unity brings to desktop?

I didn't have a chance to try Unity (other than a half an hour session on live CD which doesn't really tell you much) because it seems I would have to switch my distribution to fully utilize it, so that's why I am asking.

Also, the last I checked you couldn't move the panel from the left-hand position. Is this still true?

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 3:42 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (5 responses)

Quick points:

I like the dock-type panel on the side that shows launchers as well as running apps.
I like the fact that when I click, say, the Firefox icon on the panel, it brings up the existing instances of firefox, rather than a new window. I know lots of people hate this. But I tend to lose track of my windows and used to have 20 redundant browsers, xterms, etc running simply because they had vanished under my newer windows or been minimised and forgotten about. That no longer happens. In particular, when you press the icon once you get all the windows on the current desktop, including minimised windows; when you press it again, you get a expose-style presentation of all windows, on all desktops, including minimised windows. I really like that. And when I do in fact want a new window, I either launch it from the old window, or use Alt-F2...
While I don't really like the Mac-style menubar on the top of the screen -- I prefer it on the window where my eyes are focussed -- I don't hate it as much as I expected. On a smaller screen I may even prefer it, I don't know.
(Not really Unity, but Compiz) I like the "expose windows" effect, the ability to dim windows (useful when working at night without lights -- ie when the kid is sleeping), and a bunch of other visual effects.

Yes, it seems true that you can't move the panel from the left. Not a deal-breaker for me. I prefer it there anyway.

On the whole, I like the way it's going and I feel no urge to try GNOME 3.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 7:15 UTC (Sat) by SilverWave (guest, #55000) [Link] (1 responses)

>I like the dock-type panel on the side that shows launchers as well as running apps.

Agree.

>I like the fact that when I click, say, the Firefox icon on the panel, it brings up the existing instances of firefox, rather than a new window.

Agree.

And when I do in fact want a new window, I either launch it from the old window, or use Alt-F2...

I just Middle click.

>On the whole, I like the way it's going and I feel no urge to try GNOME 3.

Agree

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 12:29 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Ah, thanks for the middle-click tip!

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 8:04 UTC (Sat) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

Apart from the Mac-style menubar, the points you like mostly apply to GNOME 3 as well.

Is the Alt-Tab switcher behavior described in the screenshot tour new (as in, different from 10.04)? In which case, I like how they use the same navigational control as GNOME 3's Shell -- you cycle among apps with TAB or left-right, and press down to select among an app's tabs

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 16:00 UTC (Sat) by JohnLenz (guest, #42089) [Link] (1 responses)

While I don't really like the Mac-style menubar on the top of the screen -- I prefer it on the window where my eyes are focussed -- I don't hate it as much as I expected. On a smaller screen I may even prefer it, I don't know.

If you want, you can disable this by setting the environment variable UBUNTU_MENUPROXY to nothing. I personally am fine with the menu bar the way it is, but some old apps I have don't show the menu properly. In that case, I start them in a script with "export UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= "

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 28, 2011 15:53 UTC (Sun) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

Having to write your own script to launch an application is not a very user-friendly workaround though.

I find the global menu bar great on my netbook, acceptable on my laptop, but very annoying on my desktop...

Maybe it's because on the first I run almost all applications maximized, while on the last I run almost no applications maximized, and I tend to have some relatively smaller windows at the right & especially at the bottom-right, which is far away from the global menu on a hi-res screen.

I wish they would not use the global menu bar for non-maximized windows (or maybe provide both menu bars, if they think that's better).

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 4:07 UTC (Sat) by sladen (guest, #27402) [Link] (2 responses)

rsidd: Have you considered, or had any success in getting in touch with hardware manufacturers? Customers telling vendors is part of the reason that we now have in-tree vendor-supported drivers and software for a lot of stuff these days

If you want something else/better/different to happen, it's probably also worth giving any vendors you do speak to a clear indication about what you'd like and the price-point you'd be prepared to pay for it.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 4:27 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, the tablet I own is made by a start-up called Notion Ink, who have, it seems, a quite peculiar business plan. They have only direct-sold, against pre-orders, so far. Their hardware is quite nice, based on the NVidia Tegra 2. Their software, layered on Android 2.2, is disappointing. A large community has sprung up to develop alternative ROMs for this (and other) devices. As far as I can tell, Notion Ink has been actively helpful to many individuals in this community, both with specs (where possible) and with funding. In effect, they have outsourced their software development to a free community. The shortcomings are with NVidia, and we all know what they are like and how responsive they are to the linux community. In fact NVidia has a Linux-for-Tegra out there but it's hardly functional, and is full of binary blobs. Early reports said Notion Ink was considering Ubuntu, but they went with Android because, I suppose, they couldn't get a sufficiently functional Ubuntu running.

And the other bottleneck with ARM is its entire architecture: it seems, unlike with PCs, you can't just select a new kernel from the bootloader, and go to the old one if the new one fails -- you basically have to reflash every time.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 23:56 UTC (Sat) by speedster1 (guest, #8143) [Link]

> And the other bottleneck with ARM is its entire architecture: it seems, unlike with PCs, you can't just select a new kernel from the bootloader, and go to the old one if the new one fails -- you basically have to reflash every time.

That's not inherent to the ARM architecture. Most ARM devices use u-boot as bootloader, which is actually quite flexible (able to try out new kernels via net boot for instance, or select among multiple kernels stored at different areas of the flash). The problem is that access to u-boot is traditionally through a serial port. Manufacturers could be adding touchscreen display and input drivers to u-boot so that it would be easily accessible like a PC BIOS, but I haven't seen that happening yet.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 7:11 UTC (Sat) by SilverWave (guest, #55000) [Link]

>instantly comfortable (well, very quickly comfortable) with Unity in Natty.

I feel the same about Natty.

I didnt bother with Maverick as it didnt give me anything I needed over Lucid.

But Natty looked interesting.

I havent tried Oneiric yet but have high hopes.

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 4:44 UTC (Sat) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link] (1 responses)

As long as I can launch two gvim's from the command line, and use the Alt command shortcuts to copy and paste between them, it'll be an improvement over the current Unity... couldn't even do that simple task.

I actually like the look and the basic idea of keeping things simple, but if I can't successfully multi-task, then, for me, the whole things a waste :/

<Semi-related rant>

I think designers are obviously getting influenced by the success of the iPhone/table/etc.. but they're also repeating the same mistakes Apples makes everytime (and I see signs of this in Unity, as with the GVIM example)

For example, everytime I use an Mac or an iPhone I think

- ooo.. how pretty..
- wait.. I have to go several menus deep to rename a file?
or..
- wait.. what happened to the global menu.. oh, Apple didn't detect my resolution right.. it's off the top..
or..
- wait.. I can't change the font size? And the only replies out there are snarky comments about "Well, a Mac doesn't fix your bad eyesight." So now I have to run my hi-def 1080 monitor at some silly resolution, because changing the font size isn't allowed by some persons "vision" of how people should "experience" their software...

And I see similar issues in Unity..
It's great that this stuff looks pretty, but it's gotta work too :|

Grouped switcher: Alt-Tab-Down, Alt-[key above tab] and Ctrl-Alt-t

Posted Aug 28, 2011 7:07 UTC (Sun) by sladen (guest, #27402) [Link]

ssmith32: While I'm not inclined to express an opinion about the nature of a grouped Alt-Tab switcher approach the following key sequences may be of use:

Alt+[key above Tab] which switches within a group (so between Terminals if you are currently viewing a Terminal)
Alt+Tab, Shift-Tab, Down, Left/Right allows switching within a group's sub-members
Ctrl-Alt-t should bring up a new Terminal without altering any other state or stacking order, and can be closed again without affecting other state or stacking

Hope that helps!

Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

Posted Aug 27, 2011 12:52 UTC (Sat) by sce (subscriber, #65433) [Link]

In the beginning I hated Unity, but now I use it on all my ubuntu installations and I really like it.

However, there's this insanely annoying bug I hope they'll fix soon: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/770388

Basically it looks like a window (normally a firefox window in my case) has focus, but keyboard goes to another window instead. There's no obvious way to get the focus to the right window either, ALT+TAB doesn't always work for me, clicking on firefox in the application launcher looks like a good tip though.