Ubuntu desktop moving application menus back into application windows
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
So, I have this theory. The theory is that Microsoft and/or Apple somehow infiltrated the Ubuntu organization and got their men in as developers and made big changes to sabotage and undermine the Ubuntu project. And they've done great.
Let me tell you about the Unity Launcher: http://www.bomski.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screenshot....
The awesome thing about it is the microscale indicator that is supposed to tell you what window is open. Yeah, that small little triangle on right/left side of icons. It gets even better when you have many windows open (the icon menu folds) or have more than one window open of a certain application (the triangle becomes an elongated thin icon which is now twice as difficult to make out in full-view): http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-36ZlfS5qyI0/TZREYHuo56I/AAAAAAAAAr.... Basically, the most perfect applications panel design to get my mom to stop using Ubuntu (it worked, too!) When on a high resolution screen, I can't quite make them out either (so it got me to stop using Ubuntu as well)! Also, changing windows (e.g., if you have two or three document processing files open), how do you quickly and efficiently switch to the right one? I don't know! Give Ubuntu a chance yourself to see more gems like this. Man, I really have to give kudos to whoever is behind this, to have convinced their 'dedicated UI team' that this shit is anything less than a joke. Bravo Apple/Microsoft/whoever you are, I'm impressed!
Our head UI designer sent SPAM for a living before working for us.
What I can't get my head around is why Canonical and so it appears Microsoft think you need one common interface for all the devices so 3 inch screens to 30 inch screens. Apple seem to have worked that one out as have KDE with their various desktop styles.
It's fine to just push changes, otherwise we would be stuck in the 80s and the 90s (everyone hates changes), but it's not fine to not listen to any kind of feedback from the community, even after years.
The unity sidebar is the biggest example. They refused to let users change the size of the icons for years. Even now, you're still limited by a small range they've decided on. They removed used, small features because it would make the codebase "harder to mantain".
The global menu is an usability nightmare on Ubuntu (the HUD instead is a pretty cool concept). I don't really like global menus, but Canonical managed to make it even worse - It's hidden by default, and get showed only on mouse hover. I've been using Linux with various DE for years, and the last time I tried Ubuntu it took me 5 minutes to remember where is the menu (I can only wonder what would my parents do). Obviously, they didn't change this at all.
I could go on and complain about Ubuntu all day (and not only about Unity - I'd like to talk about their tendency to patch everything downstream) but the message is "Canonical shot themself in the foot". I can only hope this is a "new beginning" and they'll start to listen their userbase.
In reality, whoever is unhappy screams and claims to speak for "the community" as a way of trying to get their way. And almost always someone is unhappy.
Most of the time, an equally large subset of the community is not screaming because they are happy with that decision.
You could chase one side of the community and then the other forever, without reaching a stable outcome.
There are plenty of examples: globalmenu on/off, globalmenu hidden/showed by default, buttons on the left/right side of the window, size of the icons in the launcher, side of the screen on which the launcher appear, show the launcher on every screen or only the main one...
All you can do right now is to move the global menu from the "global" bar to the window bar. You can't still have it back to "default", like other operative systems, and you can't still have it being visible by default.
And, by the way, this was just one small point of my post. Everything else still applies.
If Ubuntu listens to the loudest community whiners the UI would be a terrible mess. If you don't like the default desktop: sudo apt-get install -y fluxbox, or whatever of the dozens of other WM's are out there that you like better. Problem solved.
By default like the operative system with 90%+ of the marketshare - Windows. I'm not saying that they're doing it good, but 90%+ of the people using a computer expect it to act that way. I'm also not saying that it should be the default, just have a tiny little option somewhere (instead of forcing me to remove the appmenu* packages, which I know how to do it, but my parents sure don't).
I'm also not sure why are you attacking me and telling me to install another DE - I have (In fact, I don't even use Ubuntu anymore, as I don't like apt-get and some other stuff). I'm just saying that they should add some options to make everyone happy. I have the same feeling towards Gnome shell, but at least this one has easy-to-install plugins.
For my parents I have installed Kubuntu, KDE always works and always has the features you need.
They've already given users several choices. They're called Kubuntu, Xubuntun and Lubuntu.
Make a dialog at the start of the session when you release new features, asking if you'd like to enable new features or keep your old settings for existing users. Install new features on by default. Everyone happy, no complaints.
Then collect stats after some time and see what is actually getting used and if 95% is in favor of some option - remove the old feature.
This could also be a nice incentive to provide stats to developers - your opinion gets counted.
I mean, you test on the latest version of Ubuntu, then the LTS version, then with Gnome3, MATE and Xfce, then with Kubuntu and Xubuntu, better test all of those in 32 bit as well as 64 bit, and with free and nonfree drivers for Intel ATI and nVidia graphics cards, and you're sick of testing before you've even got off the major Ubuntu variants.
Or you don't test like that, and I find I can't get Google Earth to work, or I get VPN software that can't disconnect properly if I use the Gnome3 network manager, or any of a dozen other annoyances.
Ubuntu's goal has always been to vastly expand its userbase to, shall we say, non-traditional Linux users. Now Ubuntu wants to expand into entirely new devices. These new users are, by definition, not in Ubuntu's userbase, so if Ubuntu wants to get them, listening to existing users is likely a detriment.
If you've been using Linux with various DE for years, and Ubuntu frustrates you, then Ubuntu is not the product for you. Ubuntu is going for people who don't even know what a "DE" is.
The instant Ubuntu becomes beholden to listening to its userbase is the instant it stops doing anything interesting and it loses whatever slim chance it ever had of being anything beyond a top ranker on DistroWatch.
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Not sure he ever said it, but the point stands.
That's an example of so-called bullshit. The setting was added to the standard config util in Ubuntu 12.04, the first LTS with Unity. It was a setting in compiz config since 11.04, the very first release.
> I could go on and complain about Ubuntu all day (and not only about Unity - I'd like to talk about their tendency to patch everything downstream) but the message is "Canonical shot themself in the foot".
Of course, you can, but next when you'll want to complain, try to use it for more than 5 minutes. Don't speak for the whole userbase -- I'm a part of Ubuntu userbase, and I love Unity. I consider vanishing menus a great idea, because in practice it adds exactly zero problems with menu interaction, but saves space (less important) and reduces clutter on desktop (more important).
In Gnome the workspace switcher icon showed a mini-preview of the window layouts. In Unity this is just a static icon made to look like a mini preview! This seems cargo-cultish, as though the Unity developers don't understand what they are trying to recreate.
However, I still find myself frustrated with many browser windows open...
I have been trying to train myself to take advantage of multiple desktops, which I have been historically poor at doing.
And since I run a win7 VM continuously, I like to have that desktop on another monitor, and then I have apps open in that VM as well... I have window/tab/app overload.
Since I never shut my machine down, I only sleep it, I find that sometimes I have to just close everything and start with a fresh desktop and zero tabs to reset my brains workflow.
And this goes double for the stuff they ship in the LTS releases. I keep my servers on LTS, and so my laptop stays on that as well. That means I've had two joyous years of wacky interactions and irritating UI bugs. I just have to log out and/or reboot every couple of days. On a Linux machine.
Really, I like what they're trying to do with Unity. But if your goal is to improve the user experience, you don't ship wacky, half finished stuff to a shit-ton of users.
> Really, I like what they're trying to do with Unity. But if your goal is to improve the user experience, you don't ship wacky, half finished stuff to a shit-ton of users.
Amen to this.
There are quite a few of them:
1. Mouse scroll on the icon in the dock.
2. Click twice on the icon in the dock and select the window from spread/expose.
3. Right click and select the windows from the list.
4. Alt+Tab. Select the application, wait a second, select the window.
5. Alt+Tab. Right-click on application, select the window.
6. etc.
This is part of a larger class of problems I see with open source in particular. They copy some feature that made perfect sense in the time, context, and constraints under which it was designed, but don't factor in how things have changed or they don't have knowledge of the original problem that feature was designed to solve (which may no longer apply). I'm thinking of common programming language features in particular.
That said, the spike in usability and stability and compatibility problems of Ubuntu (like not being able to even see the last item in a list of files because the bottom status bar was removed and replaced with a floating box) just finally pushed me off Ubuntu as my primary OS this past fall, after using it as my primary OS for 7 years. I know it's free and a lot of the compatibility problems are more the fault of Microsoft/Nvidia (dual graphics, uefi, etc.), I shouldn't complain, but to me it's not a good sign when you won't even use something that's free. But maybe this article is a sign that Ubuntu will improve in the future.
I don't think it's fair to blame Open Source for this kind of problem, though. After all, Apple had a chance to fix this when they redid the UI for OS X and they didn't do it either. To this day they continue to copy the menu design from the original Macintosh even though it no longer makes sense. They also copied the Dock from NeXT into OS X, which I think was a bad decision too.
That is just a design mistake of epic proportions because I can't acquire and aim for the target menu before the mouse has reached the bar.
I never heard any Mac user complain about the global menu bar. Even on huge screens. Perhaps that is reason.
Yes, this.
I think in everyone's rush for "convergence" they just forgot about the desktop. I think the final winning solution will be more the Ubuntu/Canonical approach (and that they are a bit ahead of Windows now) in that we will have both options available and with a bit more time, you can easily choose from "interface profiles"
On a big multiscreen desktop, I love and have for a long time loved, "in app menus" and Focus-Follow-Mouse. But on my 10" netbook? I'm actually pretty happy with global menu and click-focus because usually I'm just alt-tabing between full screen apps.
Different situations call for different solutions. The real winner will be the solution that provides all options and the flexibility to seamlessly move between them, and as I said, I think Ubuntu is much closer. Windows with their entire new set of "Metro" apps and bigger "classic desktop"/metro separation I think has gone down the wrong path.
Exactly. "Desktops are dead" has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. For most users a new desktop computer wouldn't give them any significant benefits over the 5 year old one that they already have, so of course they're not going to buy one. Meanwhile, if hardware and software manufacturers had actually come up with ways to take advantage of their massive CPU and GPU power, we could have 50" displays at 8000x5000 pixels, eye tracking, gesture control, and who knows what else. Basically what this guy says: http://tiamat.tsotech.com/displays-are-the-key
I have come to like unity the way it is, though I didn't in the beginning. I support Ubuntu in the spirit of open source and to be free to do things you want to do and in the way you like.
It's very strange indeed to hear complaints about making new stuff from hackers. Don't we all do it? Sometimes for nothing else but for our heart's desire?
> Edges and corners of the computer monitor (...) are particularly easy to acquire with a mouse, touchpad or trackball. Because the pointer remains at the screen edge regardless of how much further the mouse is moved, they can be considered as having infinite width. This doesn't apply to touchscreens, though.
But there's an argument to be made for the spatial-locality as well, as you say. I think it's an interesting trade-off / difference of design philosophy.
-A UI can't/can't-not adhere to Fitt's Law; Fitt's law tells you where to put things to make them easy to hit* it says nothing about what you should put there.
-The entire edge is infinite but if your mouse has any horizontal velocity (which is extremely common now with wide screen monitors) a top menu item is only as deep as it is long. It's still easier for being 2D but it isn't infinite.
*more accurately it's a mathematical model that tells you how long it takes to acquire a target with a mouse. I have no actual proof that speedy = easy.
Of course, it looks like that behavior will be the same in this new mode, which is sort of the worst of both worlds from a Fitts' law perspective.
I think the Fitts' law issue is a bit irrelevant though. If you want to use menu items quickly, you use the keyboard.
It's unfortunate that we just don't have the resources to make a sane desktop-level application menu on the desktop-linux stack, even with all the might of Ubuntu. But that seems to be the case, so I'm glad they're moving to something more feasible. Even if it's a little disappointing.
A few commercial products running on Linux are important to our workflow. If they have a GUI, chances are high that there is a visual bug that makes the program unusable and that the root cause is a Unity feature. For example, the thing that moves the menu to the top bar meant no menu at all. Something else meant 1 quadrant of the application window just wouldn't paint at all, still no idea why on that one.
Wasting half a day implementing a workaroud here and there isn't the worst thing in the world, but it's a low enough number of special purpose machines that I always threaten the next time I'll just migrate them to another DE.
What do we drag stuff with now without setting off a menu?
But the question is great! For a regular user dragging window without setting off a menu can become a serious usability issue. Yes, menu won't take the whole bar but still the size of the movable area becomes substantially smaller.
One solution to detect dragging could be to use mouse release event for menu, instead of press and filter out shaky hand who actually wanted menu, not drag. But then again it's still bad because user expects menu system to react ASAP/mouse press, not release.
GNOME leaves a small portion of the top bar free for dragging purposes (about an inch on my 17'' monitor)... more than ample space to suit anyone's dragging needs.
This matches my experience. I usually work from a laptop, but when I've used ubuntu on a larger monitor it's been annoying to have to go all the way to the top left of the screen for a menu. I use keyboard shortcuts for most actions, but I do notice the issue when I need to access a menu.
I don't really care where the menu items are. If the top bar would auto-hide, I'd be fine with it. I just don't want to give up the space.
Apparently there's a modified Unity called "Unity Revamped" which adds autohide as an option to CCSM, but it's a slightly older version of Unity, and for whatever reason I can't downgrade to it.
Or if you have 2 or more windows vertically above each other, you even gain some vertical screen real estate.
Doesn't anyone else find it a bit weird how they pretend they invented the top bar menu and are like: "Yeah, we had this really cool and innovative idea, but, um, yeah as it was used in the real world for the past couple of years we gathered some data and we have second thoughts... You know how it is when you're the first and only product with an original feature..." Right... Because it's not like there's a certain other operating system GUI which has had this feature since the '80s.
- If I want to do something to an object within a page (copy link, open image, translate text), I right click on that thing.
- If I want to do something to the active document/page, there's a button for it at the top.
- If I want to make a change to the application, I go to the singular settings dialog accessible through the "more functions" button.
Hierarchical menus are a mess, and I'm glad they appear to be dying.
ALT-iof is wired into my fingers like C-maj on the piano. I use ALT-iof 50 times an hour when writing handouts. I've had to stop using versions of Unity after 12.04 because of the way later menu programming breaks this. See
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/7...
I don't use the mouse much.
What I don't like, however, is that they are on the top bar sometimes, but not always.
Java Swing applications usually have their own bar. evince, Ubuntu's default PDF reader, has just some useless "About" menu on top, and everything important is under the gear icon in the window (which took me about 15 minutes to discover). And it's a default GNOME application!
$ sudo apt-get autoremove appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt firefox-globalmenu
Whenever I upgrade Ubuntu, first thing I do is change the desktop manager. Unity or whatever they call it just isn't productive for me.
Just like Windows 8 (Metro) adding a button saying Start doesn't fix the problem that people have about using the thing in general. Same goes with adding menus on the top of windows for me. For me, it's the issue of just trying to locate the program I want without having to go to more effort than just selecting it from a list. Canonical thinks I want to search for it (which includes being able to remember it's name) and also be delighted at the opportunity to always download or buy something other than what's already on my computer... no thanks.
Also, what does it mean integrate it to work perfectly? Don't say "like osx", because Apple makes the hardware and they make the OS, they aren't integrating them so much as building a single product from those pieces (hardware and software)
I've bought 3 machines from them so far; all worked perfectly out of the box.
Off topic, but I need to find a nice way to do the same for OS X when I plug my Air into a huge monitor. Any suggestions?
Good keyboard controls are a must for any desktop environment and the super key is perfect for activating those while leaving all three of control, alt, and shift for applications (such as Emacs).
[0] which should be a real button, not a dinky scroll wheel.
It's the same with Win 8 Metro I thought it looked great on mobile phones and on a desktop PC or laptop PC but looks versus using are two different things!
Now, that does not mean that an application cannot spawn multiple windows at all. For example, Altium Designer --a high-end electronics circuit design package-- can make use of one or more monitors quite effectively. You can, for example, have the schematic editor running in a window on one monitor while you design the PCB on the second and the documentation is open on the third. Each window houses the relevant menus and toolbars. This would be an absolute nightmare on OSX or Ubuntu style single menu systems.
It doesn't end there. If I am working on a web project i might have my IDE open front and center while supporting tools are open on the other monitors. I usually run several virtual machines on the monitor immediately to the left. Each machine runs a different browser for testing purposes. I found this to be far easier than other options and I can keep those virtual machines and browsers clean of extraneous stuff that might otherwise modify behavior. I then keep a terminal window or two logged into whatever remote server I might be working on. This can also be on a separate monitor if needed. I usually keep the terminal on the left with the VM's. On my right monitor I usually run Chrome and Firefox for reference (PDF's, manuals, SO, etc.) and technical debugging purposes. If needed other tools such as email and the too-important music player go on the right as well. If I need photoshop, excel or some other tool it usually goes in the center monitor. I tend to keep several open file browsers on the fourth monitor (although Only one of my systems has four large monitors).
Again, dedicated and context-appropriate menus make it easy to deal with such a setup without having to mouse all over the universe of available pixels. If I had to do this on OSX or Ubuntu I'd probably throw the computer out the window. In fact our Mac systems all have dual monitors but I still use the Windows systems for almost anything other than iOS development because OSX continues to evolve into a royal pain in the ass. I can run Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server in a virtual machine on the PC with a shared drive and have the best of all worlds. BTW, running Vista and 7.
2) Mavericks was released with per-monitor menu bars four months ago.
Of course. I hope all of us are to some extent or another. The world would be a pretty sad place if people were not "unusual" about something.
> Mavericks was released with per-monitor menu bars four months ago.
To me that's replacing a bad UI/UX experience with a worst UI/UX experience.
I suspect we disagree on this. That's OK. No need to take the discussion any further.
Thanks.
It's gnu/Linux. Ubuntu isn't doing much, they do a string replace and change "Debian" to "Ubuntu", force everybody to use a half baked semi optimized for tablet even though nobody anywhere runs Ubuntu on a tablet UI layer, Unity is just garbage, but none of that matters. Ubuntu hasn't made any decisions, they are just setting some defaults.
Who cares what the default menu location is when it takes 5 minutes to get everything back to the way you like it? (10 seconds if you are clever enough to rsync your home directory from another machine)
Furthermore discussions about "little things like this" are what people have been pushing for - Linux on the desktop taking user experience as seriously as technical supremacy - for years, and is one of the main reasons people still cling to OSX and Windows.