Ubuntu Debates Usability Changes (Passionately)
Ever since last summer, when Mark Shuttleworth called on Ubuntu to surpass Mac OS X in desktop design within two years, Ubuntu mailing lists and blogs have become one of the main places to go for detailed discussions about GNU/Linux usability.
However, the discussions can become convoluted and acrimonious, as developers argue the logic of design principles. A case in point is the discussion of Ubuntu's new notification guidelines on the ubuntu-devel list over the past two weeks, which quickly turned into a discussion of whether notifications should be used at all.
The discussion centers around the new guidelines for notification messages, which typically appear by the notification tray in GNOME. These guidelines were announced in Mark Shuttleworth's blog entry for February 21. Both the blog and the guidelines include screen shots to illustrate what they are describing.
The problem is that the now-standard notification bubbles (so-called for their shape) are easily missed because they disappear after a few seconds, and often point to icons in the system tray, which users may find hard to click. For such reasons, the guidelines call for a reduction in their use, although acknowledging the possibility that they might still be useful in unspecified circumstances.
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