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Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

pcpro.co.uk

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Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#41

Post by kijin »

srik wrote: post #35
kijin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting thing is that Unity is also trying to be a tablet-friendly interface. Using the keyboard on a tablet is rather cumbersome. HUD looks like a partly desktop-optimized, partly tablet-optimized interface that sits awkwardly in-between. I'm curious why Canonical thinks it's a good idea to train users to rely on the keyboard to find things. (Ever tried to find a program in Dash?) Despite the rise of the "sea…

They plan to make the HUD capable of gesture and speech recognition.

People still need to figure out what to say, or what gesture to make. Without a traditional menu or toolbar to advertise what functionalities are available, how would they do this? A video tutorial?

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#42

Post by crazygringo »

This completely violates one of the most important aspects of interface design:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance

The article says: "One of the first things people do [when they get a new piece of software] is go through all the menus".

Of course we do! That's how we learn what the program can do, not just how to do it. That's affordance.

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#43

Post by SkyMarshal »

kijin wrote: post #28

> The HUD will be introduced with the next version of Ubuntu, 12.04 > Shuttleworth: "It will be interesting to see how users react to the changes." Please... this is an LTS release and your users aren't guinea pigs. I would hate to see another potentially promising feature get bad-mouthed all over the place due to premature release. Something like this needs months of usability testing. Couldn't they just wait until…

I thought it was odd too that they'd put this in an LTS release, however it's not a done deal yet:

Landing in 12.04 LTS is gated on more widespread testing. You can of course try this out from a PPA or branch the code in Launchpad (you will need these two branches). Or dig deeper with blogs on the topic from Ted Gould, Olli Ries and Gord Allott. Welcome to 2012 everybody!

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/939

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#44

Post by jessriedel »

crazygringo wrote: post #42

This completely violates one of the most important aspects of interface design: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance The article says: "One of the first things people do [when they get a new piece of software] is go through all the menus". Of course we do! That's how we learn what the program can do, not just how to do it. That's affordance.

After reading the brief history of this word, I think "discoverability" is a more recognized and less ambiguous term (albeit not as elegant).

Also, I think if the HUD is added to, rather than replaces, the menus, then the HUD has the potential to significantly increase discoverability.

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#46

Post by malnourish »

lvillani wrote: post #34
kijin wrote: post #28

> The HUD will be introduced with the next version of Ubuntu, 12.04 > Shuttleworth: "It will be interesting to see how users react to the changes." Please... this is an LTS release and your users aren't guinea pigs. I would hate to see another potentially promising feature get bad-mouthed all over the place due to premature release. Something like this needs months of usability testing. Couldn't they just wait until…

From the article: "although the old menu system will still be available for those who don’t want to use HUD or want to explore the available commands" In addition, users upgrading from 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS are already getting Unity (which is already in itself a breaking change). I see no reason to delay the introduction of this menu system. As a user jumping between LTS versions I welcome both the introduction of U…

I think the best solution would be packaging Unity/HUD separate from LTS and requiring the user to install it, if they wanted to, like they could with any desktop environment.

Of course, if it was already installed on the system pre-update it would install and update Unity/HUD.

They could also make it an option on their already very option heavy (which is good) download page.

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#48

Post by barnaby »

hendrix wrote: post #39

Ubuntu 10.04LTS has gnome 2, it also had gnome-do which was awesome. Ubuntu 12.04 is going to have unity/blurify or whatever -- this is a gigantic change and what prompted me to switch back to windows 7 on my laptop. This is too much change too fast especially when Ubuntu is targeting people from windows that are accustomed to windows xp/7. TL;DR Ubuntu is moving wayyyy too fast.

I would argue it's not moving fast enough. We are in the middle of a very fast-paced transition in human-computer interaction. New form-factors like tablets are being adopted rapidly (nearly doubling over this holiday season alone). A speech-enabled HUD could become the killer app of hand-held devices. But it's still not on the market, and Canonical still do not have a way to install Ubuntu on tablets. E.g. They have to move even faster!

If you think that the pace of technological change is too fast, or if you think that the music is too loud and those young hooligans should get off your lawn... then please stay on XP; but don't hold back the rest o us who will move forward without you. I look forward to your similar rant against Windows 8 with it's hand-held interface design.

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#49

Post by rlpb »

gcb wrote: post #38
kijin wrote: post #28

> The HUD will be introduced with the next version of Ubuntu, 12.04 > Shuttleworth: "It will be interesting to see how users react to the changes." Please... this is an LTS release and your users aren't guinea pigs. I would hate to see another potentially promising feature get bad-mouthed all over the place due to premature release. Something like this needs months of usability testing. Couldn't they just wait until…

That's one reason I'm back to Debian for a year now.

The GNOME 3 shell is in the Ubuntu archive, same as Debian. AIUI, it's one "apt-get install" away.

It seems a bit overkill to switch distro just because you don't like the default.

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#50

Post by marchdown »

MarkMc wrote: post #11

Two things: 1. OS X already does this in the 'Search' option of the Help menu. 2. Menus are a useful way to discover the main features of a program. That is, the user can be in 'browsing' mode, not just 'searching' mode.

This is an incredibly underappreciated functionality. OS X's help menu is a close equivalent to ido-mode in emacs. You hit Cmd+Shift+/ and type in first few letters of the name of some command you're looking for, select it in the drop-down menu, and there pops a thick wobbling arrow pointing at its location in the normal menu hierarchy. Fantastically useful.
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