Hi, I appreciate the ongoing design work to make the system status
menus ("indicators") more logical and hopefully more useful. I have
some suggested improvements and thought bringing it up in an email
might be more useful than opening several individual bugs. For
clarity, this is the spec I'm referring to below:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeviceMenuAndUserMenuSince I help out on the Documentation Team, I value clear user interface terminology so that users, powerusers, and maybe even developers can use the same, understandable language. The old session menu name became unclear when System Settings was added to it, but I have to say that "device menu" is an even worse name. I strongly prefer calling this menu the "system menu" since the items here are generally system actions or configurations. Also, it's parallel to the power menu having a power settings button and the sound menu having a sound settings button. http://pad.lv/815077 was reported about the lack of a Restart button. It appears as though the spec is that Restart will only be shown if restart-required updates have not been applied. A typical user will want to restart to Windows or OS X. A fair number of developers have another Ubuntu install or Linux distribution they would like to reboot to use. Requiring users to log out before they restart seems to make a common usecase more frustrating. If the desire is to reduce menu option clutter, I suggest keeping the option as Shut Down (or Power Off might be a good descriptive alternative). And then use a pop-up like Gnome Shell to allow Restart, Shutdown (automatic after 60 seconds), or Cancel. See http://i.imgur.com/lLPoL.png Login Items (Startup Applications) has only a very narrow, power user use case especially in its current condition. I have never used it for anything useful. For power users, it's easily findable in the Dash. Since Bluetooth has its own menu, it definitely should not be in the system menu. Many computers don't have bluetooth support anyway. Honestly, I strongly question the need to have direct links here to individual panels of System Settings. The most common options (Power, Bluetooth, Sound, etc.) already are consistently at the bottom of their respective menus. Displays also should just work for most people; for others, set once and then always work. Devices sounds like it should also include the ability to unmount removable drives, but perhaps this is a conflict with the Places Lens thing. I very much like having System Settings at the top of the system menu and the Lock/Sleep/Power options at the buttom. I also like the Software Updates status incorporated into the system menu. Moving on to the user menu, Online Accounts is not a very useful menu item. I mean, it's nice to know that it's available (especially as it's a brand new feature) but it should basically just be a one-time action to set it up, especially if Gnome 3.2 ships with only Google enabled as a choice (it's not completely clear whether Facebook & Twitter will be turned on by default by Gnome this cycle). However, definitely very useful would be a My Account button which enables users to easily set their password, account picture, language, or add another account. Gnome Shell has this in their menu and here's the screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/Fcjd1.png Thanks for the chance to comment. Jeremy Bicha _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
