Window indicators for Ubuntu ("windicators")

Finally a sensible explanation for why the window title bar widgets were moved to the left in Ubuntu 10.04.

The end result of a full screen interface with minimal chrome for devices with small screens is great.

It's interesting how we've gone a full circle right back to full screen single tasking apps. Perhaps this is the iPhone's influence?

Maybe we'll finally get the purple button in the next Mac OS X? http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2000/02/mac-os-x-dp3.ar...

Mark Shuttleworth uses Balsamiq Mockups. That's a great endorsement for Balsamiq.

Ick! So they are taking the functionality of dock/bar icon apps and reproducing it in each window title bar? Seems needlessly complicated and cluttered to me. I prefer a simple, streamlined design myself.

I am not sure why this particular UI layout (and the infamous left-side buttons were at all necessary). There is another equally viable alternative, without all the complex re-engineering needed for "client side window decorations".

let the window controls and buttons stay as they were pre-lucid. The left side button – the window control menu – will glow/shine when the application window has updated a status. Clicking on the window control button will show a drop down that has (in addition to the “To Desktop”,”Resize”, “Maximize”, etc.) an alerts subsection. Clicking on the events in the alerts subsection will behave exactly the way windicators work in the above design.

Cons: rather than have all indicators in front of you at all times, you have to take the bother of clicking the window control button (or press alt-spacebar). Pros: My mother doesnt need to be puzzled about what the green shiny button is supposed to indicate, in the drop down, I can have text as well as an icon.

Ubuntu user here. I am a bit wary of this change because it breaks the visual consistency from a desktop POV. In theory this idea is great if people used the same icons and conventions. Sadly consistency is not one of linux'es strong points. I fully expect java, tk, qt, gnome, wxwidgets to each design their own window decorators which behave / appear ever so different. Perhaps it would have been better to expose some inbuilt "Windicators" via a DBus service and applications that wanted to show a windicator could set a message to the DBUS service. To be fair maybe the Ubuntu folks have a perfect design for this, but since they havent released it its hard to be optimistic. edit to add more pessimism - This will only make life more difficult for tiling window managers like ratpoison, xmonad, awesome that dont support window decorators, because many apps will go ahead and just assume the presence of a window decorator on every window.

I still don't get it. Why change the position of the controls and put indicators there? Why not use the left side for the indicators and remove the `arrow`?

Maybe I'm becoming one of the tinfoil hat people, but: They change the controls position and allow the application itself to draw the windicators. Application knows nothing about the controls position or the theme really, so it's possible that ubuntu applications will simply draw on the right. Suddenly people have to patch the applications to use them on another distribution and use themes that match what ubuntu apps try to do... Did I miss something?

All of this seems weird again when they presented screenshots with ~6 icons in the notification area as a "bad" example and now they put the same amount of icons per application (where applications can use their own icon styles).

Hey Mark, it would have been a good idea if you'd mentioned this in the context of the whole "buttons on the left" debacle. At least then there would have been some justification for the UI change other than the nebulous "frees up space nicely on the right".

Maybe he just enjoyed watching the ensuing drama.

The Ubuntu changes make me cringe - I like how windows are now, and this sort of change makes me hesitant to upgrade.

I like using Ubuntu, but several times when I've upgraded it trashed my system, or features didn't work right on an upgraded system while they did on a fresh install.

Those are the issues I think they need to work on - making it flawless for the masses to use. A bad upgrade experience for a normal user and they'll go running back to Mac/Windows. On top of that changing things like this will make it harder for normal users to find the buttons they're used to.

I'm not anti-progress, but it seems like you should make significant changes after you have a large market share.

Interesting but looks cluttered.

im all for inovation. But his example was the worst.

Removing the status bar from the browser and using more space on the title?

Ive been using no title on my browser (go gtkrc) even before chrome. Because the tabs do the same work as the title (display page title) plus added funtionality. So its only natural to remove the title bar. Not add stuff there.

Also everyone uses xterm titles as a status bar.

Wait, what?

You want to clutter up the window title bar with more garbage?

This is why Mac OS X is the only viable desktop Unix. Apple knows how to distinguish between the simple, elegant, and useful and the eye candy which distracts and interferes with attention.