> 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 12.10?
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 Unity and the addition of keyboard-driven, menu searches.
I see your point though: maybe a better solution would be to have it in the LTS but disabled by default?
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.
Seeing as how 12.04 is many months away, I don't understand your disagreement.
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!
It seems a bit overkill to switch distro just because you don't like the default.
Just an overgrow gnome-go, with lots of settings screen missing
There are even projects appearing to close the gap. What i strongly believe it's a waste of everybody time
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 wouldn’t really work if every app had to implement this feature on its own, probably in different places and with slightly different behavior. Even if the behavior were consistent you still could never be sure whether you can search in the first place, that uncertainty is in my experience a good way to make sure a feature will never get used.
This seems like a great OS level feature.
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.
Also, I think if the HUD is added to, rather than replaces, the menus, then the HUD has the potential to significantly increase discoverability.
I also hope this provides a nice, general way to introduce sciptability into applications, and that actions will be able to take arguments in the future. Or is that going too far?
The example for affordance I always use is the door handle example.
The pull handle on a door 'affords' pulling. The metal pad 'affords' pushing.
(a keyboard button 'affords' pressing)
Essentially they look like they should be pulled, pushed and pressed.
However, "hover" isn't a touch thing, so I bet that Ubuntu will make that functionality a 2nd class citizen or just cut it out altogether in favor of more a more tedious "touch oriented" (read: clicky) drill-down behavior. Which will suck (IMO).
Windows menus items have certain letters underlined, and you can hit Alt+underlined letter to open a menu, then Alt+letter to select an item or submenu. It provides both discoverability and keyboard-based navigation.
OS X places hotkeys at the far right of every menu item which has a hotkey equivalent.
One of the goals should be reducing the frequency of keyboard <-> mouse switches. If I'm using Paint, it would be annoying to type to search for commands; it would be the only time I had to let go of the mouse. It works the other way, too, and such "keyboard-centric" applications will benefit from a fast and easy command search.
And no matter what, as many commands as possible should have a keyboard shortcut, which should be listed next to the command when you search for it (this doesn't look to be the case). When we already know which command we want, we don't need to search for it.
I understand the need to force a shift to new/better features, but that doesn't mean removing features for existing and continuing use cases.
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 "search" paradigm, keyboard shortcuts, and typing in general, have always been the domain of experienced users and programmers. Ordinary users tend to rely much more on the mouse; they type only when absolutely necessary. In fact, unless the new interface gives them plenty of hints, they'll probably no idea what to type. Wasn't Ubuntu trying to make things easier for ordinary users, even at the expense of power users? Or does the benefit outweigh the potential disadvantages in this case?
Do I detect a touch of Jef Raskin's idea of typeable commands here as well? I'll have to re-vist his The Humane Interface
Bring it on I say
Trivial example obviously. The activation key is 'alt' at present and appears to be hard wired.
I don't know if it's iterating a directory of softlinks or an SQLite database but it was slowww on two computers I use that run Windows 7 well.
And before in case you question my love of Linux.. my solution was to boot into Fluxbox.
TL;DR Ubuntu is moving wayyyy too fast.
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.
The point that I disagree on is that Mark Shuttleworth & CO are releasing software every 6 months that in many cases (myself included) breaks comparability with hardware. This among other problems has IMO caused Ubuntu to fall to #2 on distrowatch, while Linux Mint which includes MATE and a much more customizable gnome 3 has risen to the top. If they can really make it against apple then more power to ‘em.
(yes I know Ubuntu does not include gnome 3 by default but both gnome 3 and unity depart from the traditional win95 style desktop)But the coolest part was how you could add functionality. The framework let you write new commands that interacted well with the parser and gave hints to the autocomplete, and even custom UI with HTML & JS. And then users could subscribe to your commands. Ubiquity would cache the code and periodically, seamlessly upgrade your browser with new versions of the commands you subscribed to.
I was very sad when they discontinued development, and Unity looks like an excellent place to put these ideas to work again.
Unfortunately, my main complaint with Enso and Ubiquity was that both were unfortunately rather buggy. And given Ubuntu's track record with Unity, I suspect that it will be just as buggy.
I mash the tab key in bash all the time for completion when looking for a command, perhaps not as advanced as the 'fuzzing', but handy nonetheless.
How about an alternative: Leave the menus as is, and introduce a global keyboard shortcut that searches menus, a per-application Alt-F2
(I totally agree - either turn it into a keyboard shortcut, or a reserved 16x16px spyglass icon in the upper right hand corner of the menu bar...)
a) often the way I discover about the other programs/things that are similar is the fact that they also appear in the same drop down menu.
b) memory. Often the name of the item is not something I recall, but I remember the shape/color of the icon, or the association with the location in the menu
c) namefail. These things (at least how it works in Ubuntu 11) suck at finding the actual program. Some programs have multiple names by which they are known and they don't show up when you type the more common one. Google Earth is a good example. Or some - just don't show up at all for some reason.
Removing context menus altogether though? Navigating around the application using ALT + <Key> is much quicker than bringing up a search and typing a full word in and then navigating to the second or third option down.
The only other alternative would be to add keyboard shortcuts to absolutely every feature in every application.
Also great to find your way around after an upgrade to Xcode 4. I even used it in TextMate until I found out about cmd+ctrl+T. Only Eclipse had (has?) broke it, of course...
It doesn't learn, though.
One of the reason why I loved Launchy[1] so much. That little program drastically reduced the need to use the mouse and launch/find any application with just a few keystrokes.
Even, Ubuntu 11 has similar functionality with Unity. But,it's searching capability is little disappointing, though.
[1] - http://www.launchy.net/
I hope developers of Alfred for OS X look at this and try to apply some of those ideas going forward. App-specific, contextual Alfred would be great.
Perfect for the expert, no exploration for the newcomer
