Re: New panel logout/shutdown alert - a mini ui review

[Paolo Borelli <pborelli katamail com>]

Hi Vincent,

   I was a bit esitant to bring this up, given all the recent fuss with 
icon themes, wallpapers applet etc. I am also sorry to not have raised 
these concerns in a more timely manner. Anyway,  since it has come up I 
wanted to express some of my doubts about the new logout dialog.

First of all lets make it clear that I am very happy that you guys put 
lots of work into this: I agree that the old dialog deserved to die :)
I also can see some of the rationale of some of the design decisions you 
made: for instance I like that you split logout from shutdown and I 
won't complain about the removal of "save current session" (even if I 
used it while having the "pleasure" of implementing session saving in 
the new gedit ;).


Now my gripes:

- the dialog is IMHO a bit ugly: it's very small and most importantly it 
doesn't have the HIG suggested 4:3 width/height ratio (especially the 
shutdown one)

- the  timeout of death :). I see from your response that this is 
supposed as a way to quit with just one click, but is this really 
useful? Does anyone really waits 60 seconds staring at it? Would people 
in a lab just let the contdown run and go away from the pc? What if 
after the time runs out the logout an app with unsaved docs pops up a 
confimation dialog?
Most importantly is it just me or having a countown gives to the user a 
sense of anxiety? Reminds me of "This message will autodestroy in..." :)

- it's a "simple" dialog: I know many pimped this direction as a 
feature, but personally I don't agree. Shutting down it's a very 
peculiar operation and we want to get all the attention to it. It 
doesn't make any sense to do any other thing while you are shutting 
down. I liked how the old dialog shaded all the desktop or how in 
Windows the rest of the desktop becomes black&white: it communicates 
very well that you are doing an irreversible operation

As for the issues raised by Luca:
> > 3. Invert Logout and Shutdown entries in Desktop menu - no bug entry -
> > reason: well, honestly just a personal feeling, but I preferr the Logout
> > menu entry at the end of desktop menu. Every time I've to logout, I move
> > the mouse to Shutdown, I see it's not Logout, so I've to move it 1 place
> > up and select Logout. Of course this is inertia switching from previous
> > layout, but am I the only one? The change is from this
> >
> >         --------
> >         Lock Screen
> >         Log Out user
> >         Shut Down
> >
> > to
> >
> >         ---------
> >         Lock Screen
> >         Shut Down
> >         Log Out user
> >     
>
> The idea was to have the items in a progressive order. I think the current
> order makes more sense, but input from more other people is welcome :-)
>
>   
Here I definately agree with Vincent. I also think that the most used 
item should stay last and I think that on notebooks and personal 
desktops shutting down is a more common operations. Deployed installs 
will probably want to get rid of shutdown menu item anyway.


Thanks for your work!


ciao

   Paolo