Re: [Usability] Incorporating UI Innovations from Upstream Projects to GNOME

[Allan Caeg <allancaeg ubuntu com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alex Faaborg <faaborg mozilla com>
Date: Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 10:44 AM
Subject:
 Re: Keep bar-style notifications for Firefox 4 on Linux instead of 
doorhanger notifications which breaks consistency on GNOME desktop
To: Allan Caeg <allancaeg ubuntu com>
Cc: Citizendruide <citizendruide gmail com>, thibaut bethune gmail com, dev-usability lists mozilla org

Do we have a list of UI solutions that deviate from the platform? We, people who work on the desktop, can look at that list so we can integrate them to the GNOME desktop.

I should give this some more thought, but here's what comes to mind off of the top of my head of aspects that somewhat deviate.  Also some of these are just aspects of Firefox's design approach that I think are generally a good idea and I would really like to see cross pollinate into other open source projects:

-The notion of an application button that simultaneously serves as both window title and contains all top level commands

-Lightweight and reproducible notifications (ok/meh instead of ok/cancel)

-A
 general hesitation to interrupt the user with (probably) non-actionable
 information.  For instance, Firefox used to very aggressively inform 
users when there were updates available for their extensions, even 
though the vast majority of users don't actually care.  An analogy to 
the desktop would be when the Windows system tray informs me that 
someone in the office just turned on a media center PC, or when OS X 
tells you about spotlight indexing, or time machine backup.  None of 
these things are likely to be actionable.  I can't immediately think of a
 good example of a meaningless GNOME notification, but sometimes just 
providing the API can be problematic.  I think there's a reason apple 
didn't ship anything like Growl, so GNOME might want to seriously 
consider if giving applications a way to ping the user with d-bus is a 
good idea.

-Leveraging the user's spatial memory.  Panorama is a good example 
of the potential here, and I think the design principles it employs 
definitely apply to managing files and applications in a desktop 
environment.

-Toolbar controls that have a visual hierarchy.  This is something 
that I would like for us to be able to do on Linux, but isn't really 
compatible with the system native icons.  I have a post about what I 
mean by visual hierarchy here: http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2008/10/24/firefox-themes-the-contention-between-visual-hierarchy-and-toolbar-customization/

Hopefully that helps, and I'll give this some more thought as well,
-Alex

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Allan Caeg <allancaeg ubuntu com> wrote:

Hello,

There's a discussion on Mozilla's Usability list ( dev-usability lists mozilla org ) entitled "Keep bar-style notifications for Firefox 4 on Linux instead of doorhanger notifications which breaks consistency on GNOME desktop." You can find the discussion here and the related bug report here.

Alex Faaborg said

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 4:19 AM, Alex Faaborg <faaborg mozilla com> wrote:
External consistency is important, but in cases where we feel we have a
better solution to a particular interface, there is an advantage to using
that solution (even if it is different).  We've also seen aspects of
Firefox's UI influence the design of Gnome (most recently a discussion
around application buttons that encapsulate the title and main commands).
So these types of changes are more fluid and incremental than a top down
approach where the Gnome team writes a Human Interface Guidelines rule book,
and then every application has to blindly follow it regardless of if a
better solution exists.

The specific advantages of our new panel based system are:

1. Identifiable with low resolution peripheral vision
2. Easy to ignore, by clicking outside to close
3. Easy to bring back, since they have a persistent anchor (supporting undo
if the user changes their mind)
4. Natual mapping to the site identity block that is originating the
notification, making it clear who is asking for what (more important in the
case of the Web, where these notifications involve permissions, and we want
users to consider the identity of the site asking for their physical
location, or a live feed from their webcam, etc.)

-Alex

I suggest that we incorporate the UI solutions that upstream projects like Firefox come up with to achieve consistency and (of course) make the desktop experience smoother. I asked for a list of UI solutions like the doorhanger notifications so we can see how we can incorporate each of them to the desktop.

--
Regards,
Allan
http://www.google.com/profiles/allancaeg#about
+63 918 948 2520

-- 
Regards,
Allan
http://www.google.com/profiles/allancaeg#about
+63 918 948 2520