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Where Unity Needs To Go For 11.10 And 12.04


James Gifford's Gravatar

James Gifford
published May 30, 2011, 5:23 p.m.


Well, it's that time. Time to come up with a few ideas on how to make Unity better.

This evening, I was in the 2buntu chatroom on AskUbuntu, and Roland and I were having a chat.

it went something like this.

James Gifford: um. <a href="http://2buntu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/dash-idea-e28093-easy-lens-switcher.png"><img src="http://2buntu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/dash-idea-e28093-easy-lens-switcher-300x173.png" /></a> ^ that's from the ayatana list. "Hi all Yesterday evening an idea popped up into my mind about how to improve Dash usability.

Mock-up: Dash Idea ?Easy Lens Switcher

Two things were bothering me subconsciously: - One click switching between Lenses is not possible - Having the 'normal' launcher icons grayed out still tempts me to click on them

My idea is having a second 'mini launcher' on the left site of the Dash showing available Lenses. When Dash is active, the top panel and the Ubuntu icon should expand and become 'box elements' (e.g. the search bar). If Dash is maximized to fullscreen, add a third 'box' for indicators - this would make the Dash look less alien to the OS.

I also do suggest to place 'System Settings' into the Dash Launcher (which should be expanded to manage installed Lenses).

Best regards" Makes no sense to me. (sorry, went offtopic there)

Roland Taylor: O.o that "makes sense"... if well implemented judging from history - not happening.

James Gifford: yeah true

Roland Taylor: One thing is certain though. Unity's focus for Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04 needs to be: stability and sane options (that are visible to users). In fact, the stability part is probably better replaced with polish (as in design decisions).

James Gifford: Stability would be nice.

Roland Taylor: Yeah :)

James Gifford: stability, and making it as fast as it can be. :)

Roland Taylor: Especially on more tricky configurations. Like on netbooks, it should use less memory.

James Gifford: A LOT LESS I can run like, Unity, and a terminal with htop. and things are like lagggggggggggg (exaggerating, but it's pretty close)

Roland Taylor: Well, I can't watch youtube videos... I think that might be due to the fact that I need to fully update my flash drive, but still.

James Gifford: I can listen to youtube videos

<em>(Via the <a href="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/1063877#1063877">2buntu chatroom</a> on chat.stackexchange)</em>

That is pretty much everything I have to say about Unity.

Something else is that everything (and I mean everything that can possibly do it) should have a <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/LauncherAPI#Static Quicklist entries">Unity Quicklist</a>.

And I'll be pushing for that a lot