Launcher should provide feedback on button press

[Craig Cabrey]

When a user presses a button on the launcher, the icon/tile should show some form of feedback that it's been pressed so the user understands that the his/her input has been acknowledged. This feedback could be in the form of a button depress or a slight darkening of the icon or something else. Some form of feedback needs to be displayed.

I understand that after a button has been pressed that the icon will begin to pulsate, but this is only afterwards. Otherwise a user might continuously press an icon not understanding that the app has already been launched.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Needs design discussion.

[Perseid (perseid)]

This is not just a usability issue for new users. Although I have now come to expect this behaviour, I'm still often unsure if I have hit the button or missed it by a few pixels until it has cycled through the animation enough to discern it from the normal appearance.
I would suggest something like the Gnome 2 startup animation: A rapidly expanding black frame centred around the icon.

[Timmmm (tdhutt)]

Bilal: I take it you mean it needs a design discussion as to exactly which feedback animation to use; not whether there should be one at all (because there obviously should be).

My vote goes to a button depress, but as an extremely easy stop-gap, a darkening of the icon could be used. This would have the advantage that you could easily add lightening of the icons for hover, which is also missing feedback.

I'd say this is pretty high priority, given the centrality of the launcher, and the fact that the complete lack of feedback makes it seem very unresponsive -- not exactly a good first impression!

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

isn't the pulsing almost spontaneous, as soon as you click on an icon in the launcher, the icon pulses to indicate its starting, though moving the cursor instantly away from the launcher hides it, making the pulse not visible, on a side note for Ubuntu 12.04 the plans are to improve the behavior as discussed in bug 893140