Wish: distinct visual indication for skipped updates

[era]

Binary package hint: update-manager

When you have run update-manager proper, and decided to not install an update, the notification icon remains orange. It would be useful to have a distinct indication for "seen but ignored" updates, so that an orange icon would always mean "new updates you should consider".

[era (era)]

Here's a mock-up of the three suggested states. The first is "new updates available", the second is "update-manager (or other aptish tool) running", and the third is the new "old updates available". Pardon me if the color I chose is revolting; I picked purple to go with the "visited link" color commonly used in web browsers.

[era (era)]

Actually the color is too pinkish; I guess I shouldn't have included gamma correction -- it looked fine over here. (Usually somehow my local images look bleak when I upload and view them in the web browser if I don't click the "include gamma" PNG option in Gimp.) Anyhow, you can probably do better than me on the design. (See also bug #43089 for coordination.)

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

Could you give some examples of why this would be useful? I can see what you're on about - but why? It needs to be worthwhile before anyone will want to write the code...

Also please mention which version of Ubuntu you're running.

[era (era)]

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:17:48 -0000, "Duncan Lithgow"
<email address hidden> said:
> Could you give some examples of why this would be useful? I can see
> what you're on about - but why? It needs to be worthwhile before
> anyone will want to write the code...

Why one might want to skip an update, or why one would like to see
whether the available updates are genuinely new?

If an update requires a reboot or otherwise seems dangerous, I will
generally put off installing it.

When I have done this, I am likely to miss potentially critical new
updates because the "updates availabe" icon is there all the time, and
it doesn't tell me whether the available updates are "new" or the ones I
skipped already.

If this is sufficient for removing the "incomplete" tag, please do.
Otherwise, do you think you could provide more instructions for what
sort of information would be useful?

> Also please mention which version of Ubuntu you're running.

7.10 in particular, though not exclusively. I also have 6.06 and
various versions in between on various installations.

/* era */

--
If this were a real .signature, it would suck less. Well, maybe not.

[era (era)]

If you need more clarifications, feel free to set back to "Incomplete".

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

What about if security updates had their own visual style. Presumable people want to install all security updates - then other updates you've skipped won't be relevant - whenever a security update is waiting... Would that fix the issue?

[era (era)]

On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:27:57 -0000, "Duncan Lithgow"
<email address hidden> said:
> What about if security updates had their own visual style. Presumable
> people want to install all security updates - then other updates
> you've skipped won't be relevant - whenever a security update is
> waiting... Would that fix the issue?

I don't think so. In fact, oftentimes, the updates I want to postpone
are security updates, because they are the ones which require a reboot.

As such, not a bad idea to have a different color coding for
high-priority updates. But what I want is a way to distinguish new
updates from skipped, precisely because there might be updates I do want
while I am postponing a particularly intrusive update.

/* era */

--
If this were a real .signature, it would suck less. Well, maybe not.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Since this report has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!