Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica) [LWN.net]

Ars technica looks forward to some desktop changes planned for Ubuntu 10.04. "The second part of Canonical's grand plan for panel perfection is a concept that the company calls the Me Menu. Based partly on Ubuntu's current presence applet, the new Me Menu will serve as a one-stop shop for configuring messaging status and social networks. Designed by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth himself, the Me Menu is expected to be one of the highlights of Ubuntu 10.04."

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Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 16:54 UTC (Thu) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (19 responses)

"Designed by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth himself"

Wow, that could be a very very bad idea! Being rich doesn't mean you can design anything.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 17:22 UTC (Thu) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link] (2 responses)

Being rich doesn't mean you can form a successful new Linux distribution.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 18:06 UTC (Thu) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (1 responses)

And starting a Linux distribution also doesn't mean you have UI design talent.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 20:53 UTC (Thu) by sharms (guest, #57357) [Link]

How do you presume to know Mark and what he studies / does daily with
respect to UI?

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 17:57 UTC (Thu) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (15 responses)

You seem to imply that being rich means that you can't design anything?

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 18:05 UTC (Thu) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (14 responses)

"You seem to imply that being rich means that you can't design anything?"

No, not at all. I'm not implying anything. I am saying that just because he is rich and has started a Linux distribution doesn't mean that he has any talent designing a UI. It could turn out completely horrible and because he is the "boss", no one will tell him it sucks.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 18:16 UTC (Thu) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (13 responses)

Well, it seems he's no longer boss. But it's weird that people are more
ready to believe that the boss cannot do something -- code, design,
whatever -- than that he can.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 19:01 UTC (Thu) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (12 responses)

Whether he can or not is not the issue. He has AFAIK no experience, so I am dubious of his talent in this area. Why should I be otherwise?

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 20:13 UTC (Thu) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link] (11 responses)

Shuttleworth has been a debian developer for years - LOL, no experience?

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 20:31 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (8 responses)

There's a lot of different areas of experience. Working on packaging and writing patches for crasher bugs is totally different than UI design. Do you have references to previous UI work he's done? A portfolio of experience?

Has Shuttleworth studied or been trained as a UI designer? Doesn't he have trained UI designers on staff? Why aren't they doing the UI design? Didn't he just say in the press briefing the the CEO change is about putting the right people in the right leadership roles? Does he have the right experience to be leading UI design?

I think its one of those situations where there is a danger of over indulging Shuttleworth's interests as wealthy dillitant and patron of Ubuntu. Having your rich patron dabbling could be really bad...or it could be great. I'm not an expert in UI design and I have no basis to comment on the quality of UI mockups. I would like to see outside UI experts critique the Me menu however.... especially with an eye on how this stuff could be integrated into the evolving gnome 3 framework.

-jef

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 18, 2009 17:28 UTC (Fri) by TRS-80 (guest, #1804) [Link] (2 responses)

Mark's got poor form - his last venture into UI was the "Ubuntu spatial" nautilus mode in 5.04, mixing the worst parts of spatial and explorer-style file browsing. At least he admitted he was wrong and it was reverted in 5.10.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 18, 2009 19:42 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

There is also the Karmic notification change. They replaced a nice, simple notification scheme with blurry black blobs that obscure random areas on the right of your screen and can't be clicked or dismissed. It's really odd!

Ubuntu packages software really well and Upstart rocks. So far, however, all of their UI innovations that I know of have been mistakes.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 24, 2009 15:46 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]

I like the new scheme. The old one pissed me off daily because it was always obscuring something that I wanted to see or use and it wouldn't go away.

The new scheme has the advantages that (a) it appears lower down so it doesn't obscure window buttons and controls, (b) if you mouse over it, it becomes virtually see-through so you can ignore it, and (c) you can click right through it so you don't have to wait for it to disappear before you can use anything in that part of the screen.

The only thing I don't like about it is how long it stays: I really don't need 15s or whatever to understand the simple message it's telling me. If it stayed about half as long as it does now that would be perfect for me.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 21, 2009 3:05 UTC (Mon) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link] (4 responses)

You're assuming he has zero design experience. Do you know this to be true? Cite sources. (Or don't, and just stop posting comments to each and every single Mark/Canonical/Ubuntu story because you can. I think the entirety of LWN knows your views full well by now.)

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 21, 2009 7:52 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (3 responses)

You want a reference with regard to Mark's past experience at user experience design? I give you this: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8752

"Apparently Mark originally wanted, given that Ubuntu is Linux for human beings, the first release of Ubuntu to carry a tasteful, artistic picture of a naked woman. This caused everyone in the company and community to offer some version of "this is a very bad idea". So, the community got Mark to step away from that in stages. In the end Mark backed down."

"When you clicked on a folder in Nautilus, a new window would pop up on the screen. People complained about how the screens would become full of windows. Mark thought it would be a great idea that when one window opened the previous window would close. This feature, at Mark's insistence, was shipped but caused an even greater number of complaints, as users wanted to know why the Nautilus window seemed to dance all over the screen."

-jef

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 21, 2009 9:28 UTC (Mon) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link] (2 responses)

I was going to respond with some actual content, but apathy overwhelmed me within the first sentence or so and I decided it wasn't worth it. Good luck with your vendetta, but can I suggest a blog along the lines of boycottnovell, instead of cluttering up LWN comments when anyone happens to mention Mark or Ubuntu (or in fact any other distribution)?

- Jef

Posted Dec 21, 2009 13:01 UTC (Mon) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, I think there is something wrong with Jef and he should seek help or
find some other outlet. A markshuttleworth-thetruthmovement.com site might
be just the thing he should go for. Be a crusader like Roy, Lefty and RMS.
He is posting literally thousands of comments on Ubuntu blogs, Ubuntu sites
and LWN about Canonical and especially about Mark.
I think he means well and in his wicked way is trying to protect RH, FOSS
and Fedora, but I think he is turning people away from Fedora, RH and FOss.
Most of the stuff he writes isn't that insightful, everybody with half a
brain that reads a few of his comments can infer the content of the next
few hundred comments easily.

I guess most readers by now are just skipping his posts. I advise you do
the same.

But what do I know, maybe these crusaders that seem just weird serve a
purpose in the bigger FOSS community. But I sure hope the spamming would
stop.

- Jef

Posted Dec 27, 2009 16:54 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

He, we all know the "with friends like these, you don't need enemies"
saying ;-)

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 23:23 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

I am not sure Mark has actually uploaded a single package, thought.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 18, 2009 1:18 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

Interestingly, he still is an official member of Debian.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 17:08 UTC (Thu) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link] (6 responses)

As long as I can ignore this "social" nonsense, and it doesn't become difficult to configure the single useful panel at the bottom of the screen (1), I don't much care what silliness they introduce out of a desire to chase Apple's taillights or whatever.

I still want an easy way to turn off the cartoonish alert popups that *never* tell me anything worth knowing. That was one of Shuttleworth's notions too, wasn't it? Oh well, whatever color paint he wants to slap on the shed...

(1) most of the crud that makes the added panel space necessary is, IMO, worthless. And the panel on top only makes sense in the context of Apple's confusion of the application and window manager, and that only if you always run full-screen. Yuck.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 18:01 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (2 responses)

If they want to experiment with new ideas... more power to them. I hope they are talking to someone about how this all fits into the evolving GNOME 3 interface design.

But unveiling them in their LTS release? Wow.. that just seems like a really bad idea. If real world user reaction to these things are negative.. they are stuck supporting it for three years. I would have thought that the 9.10 release would be where you want to throw in new experimental UI ideas so you can get some real world feedback so you can fix it in the LTS run up.

-jef

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 18:13 UTC (Thu) by Frej (guest, #4165) [Link] (1 responses)

Ubuntu is stuck redesigning stuff that shouldn't be there in the first place, like systray and
notifications. There is no coherent vision whatsoever.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 19:04 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

What? The systray kicks ass. I'm looking forward to when all my applets fit
nicely into the systray and I don't have to muck around with moving things
around on the panel.

Plus that makes things a lot more cross-desktop agnostic. If I run Fluxbox,
LXDE, or Awesome WM all I have to do is make sure there is a systray active
and I get to use all my favorite applets for managing things.

Also how is the system suppose to notify the user of stuff if you don't have
a notifications system? Window pop-ups that either get hidden behind your
active window? Pop-up windows that get blocked behind active window?

Because lord knows one of the most annoying things about many Linux GUI
applications is notification pop-ups that get lost behind other windows. And
Microsoft-style window-blocking pop-up window is just downright hateful!

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 17, 2009 22:09 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (2 responses)

>As long as I can ignore this "social" nonsense, and it doesn't become difficult to configure the
> single useful panel at the bottom of the screen (1), I don't much care what silliness they introduce
> out of a desire to chase Apple's taillights or whatever.
The social nonsense is nice when you use IRC for internal work communication.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 18, 2009 1:50 UTC (Fri) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link] (1 responses)

Uhm... that's what I use an IRC client for. I start it, it connects to the channels I need. No fancy "social" nonsense need apply here.

Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

Posted Dec 18, 2009 8:55 UTC (Fri) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

Sure, but it is handy to have the little things in the corner to say when you are there, when you are
away and to grab your attention if someone wants to tell you something. I must admit that I don't
do any contact management or anything in my IRC (though I think that these panel things also work
with e-mail).

Positive feedback

Posted Dec 17, 2009 21:11 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Here is the part that I liked about the article:

The underlying technical design of the notification icon area replacement is based largely on KDE's Status Notifier specification. The KDE community recently submitted the specification to the FreeDesktop.org interoperability project with the aim of making it a desktop-neutral standard. Canonical views the nascent specification as a promising alternative to the current notification area and has elected to adopt it rather than starting from scratch.

Cross organization work is a good thing and should be commended.