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

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

Posted Dec 17, 2009 18:05 UTC (Thu) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
In reply to: Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica) by Los__D
Parent article: Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu (ars technica)

"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.

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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.