Too hard to find control panel / settings / "System" in Unity

[John Gilmore]

Binary package hint: unity

It's too hard to find out how to do something simple like change a setting. The settings are apparently buried under a grey square that rolls off the bottom of the screen during normal operation. To get to it, you seem to have to hover at the bottom left of the screen until the left margin scrolls up, then eventually a grey square comes along that doesn't look at all like settings (it's for Applications), then you have to go into the far right corner of the screen and hit System, then you can see your system control panel settings. Way too cumbersome and counterintuitive!

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

Thanks for testing unity and helping to make it better.

Which settings are you talking about? I'm not sure to follow you.

If it's what was in system -> administration or system -> preference, it's in the application places as you told.
Another way to launch them is to click on the ubuntu logo on top and click on application or entering an application name.

Maybe a member of the design team can answer there, setting it as opinion

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

I think there's merit in the report. In part, we need to make "search
via the Dash" slicker, more obvious, faster, more accurate. In part, we
need to think about "Settings" as a special citizen.

 status confirmed
 importance medium

Mark

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

In the original mockups for the dash you'd get results from the gnome
control center capplets when searching from the home screen. Ie.
displaying 3 not 2 groups of search results: Applications, Files, and
Control Center

The unity-applications-daemon is more or less ready to deliver these
results, but I simply didn't have the time to address it for Maverick.
While it does take a bit of wiring up, all the infrastructure and
indexing logic is already ready to do this. So definitely ready for a
home run early in the Natty cycle if we still want to do it this way.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Thanks Mikkel, yes the plan is to finish the initial design, then iterate.

[Aaron Peterson (myusualnickname)]

so what is the work around? I had to switch to fill gnome to save screen space... and be able to remove applets from the panel.

[Gerson "fserve" Barreiros (fserve)]

I had an idea to solve this problem in unity, check my attachment.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Settings need to be accessible either from search (we should test that
all the settings are accessible using at least .desktop descriptions and
common terms) or from the launcher (as a Settings icon) or from the menu.

Mark

[Gerson "fserve" Barreiros (fserve)]

I think it's much better to have a button when the dash screen comes (like my mockup) than to have to search for something, specially using a tablet pc.

Is launcher the same as dash screen? (Dash screen -> The button at the left corner with ubuntu logo.)

[Gerson "fserve" Barreiros (fserve)]

Alt+f2 could start a run program, and i liked what kde4 did.

if alt+f2 starts the unity dash screen, and that search (that one that is there) works like a "run command"... That would be very good.

[papukaija (papukaija)]

@Gerson: The alt-f2 issue is tracked in bug 580295.

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

David, I want to keep ones blocked on design as "triaged" and when we get design we will mark "confirmed"

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

I am going to reverse that after talking to the bug squad. Sorry. Confirmed when blocked, triaged when we have design.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

I too have found settings very difficult to find under Unity (natty alpha 3). I would suggest that a special button be introduced into the drop down menu for settings, perhaps calling a control panel with all system setting applications.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

solution to bug 727823 might solve this issue.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Thanks Matthew - the current plan is to put an entry at the bottom of
the session menu (top right corner, power on/off image) which links to a
set of all the settings tools, either as gnome-control-center (which
apparently has a lot of issues) or a Dash search.

The rationale for this is that the menu is guaranteed available and easy
to describe to all users, consistently across both Unity and Classic
interfaces.

Mark

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

+1 for the consistent access to Setting to make the support documentation easier to maintain.

My original thoughts for how to do this were to restore "Show Desktop" in the bottom left (bug #681348) and then to restore the previous Places/Settings menus in the top bar whenever the desktop is at the top level. But the disadvantage of this alternative journey in Unity is because it requires two additional steps depending on state:

  a. Going to top-left to before bottom-left to show Launcher when autohidden
  b. Not having the top menubar visible until the cursor approaches it, and not having any other text at the top to point the user towards.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

On 6 March 2011 11:46, Mark Shuttleworth <email address hidden> wrote:
> Thanks Matthew - the current plan is to put an entry at the bottom of
> the session menu (top right corner, power on/off image) which links to a
> set of all the settings tools, either as gnome-control-center (which
> apparently has a lot of issues) or a Dash search.

That sounds like a strange place to put it to me, I certainly wouldn't
think to look there for settings and I don't think others would.

> The rationale for this is that the menu is guaranteed available and easy
> to describe to all users, consistently across both Unity and Classic
> interfaces.

It seems to me that the solution is to put a settings menu underneath
the applications menu on the main panel. I haven't tried the classic
interface, but I assume that users of that can still easily find the
settings in the "System" menu.

--
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

[Vish (vish)]

On Sun, 2011-03-06 at 11:46 +0000, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> Thanks Matthew - the current plan is to put an entry at the bottom of
> the session menu (top right corner, power on/off image) which links to a
> set of all the settings tools, either as gnome-control-center (which
> apparently has a lot of issues) or a Dash search.
>
> The rationale for this is that the menu is guaranteed available and easy
> to describe to all users, consistently across both Unity and Classic
> interfaces.
>
> Mark
>

To add to that list. Currently, the top right corner is where
GNOME3/gnome-shell also places the menu item for
gnome-control-center-3 .

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

On 06/03/11 12:41, Matthew East wrote:
> On 6 March 2011 11:46, Mark Shuttleworth <email address hidden> wrote:
>> Thanks Matthew - the current plan is to put an entry at the bottom of
>> the session menu (top right corner, power on/off image) which links to a
>> set of all the settings tools, either as gnome-control-center (which
>> apparently has a lot of issues) or a Dash search.
> That sounds like a strange place to put it to me, I certainly wouldn't
> think to look there for settings and I don't think others would.

That menu will change to being a "device" menu, where we cue things like
updates and provide for shutdown/restart as well as hardware-related
status, like raid failures. The icon will, accordingly, be a better
teaser than the current "power" icon. We'll test it to make sure. That
work is under way.

>> The rationale for this is that the menu is guaranteed available and easy
>> to describe to all users, consistently across both Unity and Classic
>> interfaces.
> It seems to me that the solution is to put a settings menu underneath
> the applications menu on the main panel. I haven't tried the classic
> interface, but I assume that users of that can still easily find the
> settings in the "System" menu.

I don't understand what you mean by "underneath the applications menu on
the main panel"?

Mark

[Matthew East (mdke)]

On 6 March 2011 14:32, Mark Shuttleworth <email address hidden> wrote:
> On 06/03/11 12:41, Matthew East wrote:
>> It seems to me that the solution is to put a settings menu underneath
>> the applications menu on the main panel. I haven't tried the classic
>> interface, but I assume that users of that can still easily find the
>> settings in the "System" menu.
>
> I don't understand what you mean by "underneath the applications menu on
> the main panel"?

If you click the Ubuntu icon, you get a panel menu down the left hand
side with various launchers. In that menu there are currently items
for "Files and folders" and "Applications" respectively. My suggestion
is to add a further entry in that menu for "Settings".

--
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Ah, right. That would work, yes, but only in the Classic view. Using the
session indicator allows for consistency between both environments.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

On 6 March 2011 15:39, Mark Shuttleworth <email address hidden> wrote:
> Ah, right. That would work, yes, but only in the Classic view.

The suggestion is for the Ubuntu Desktop (Unity) view, and not the
Classic (Gnome) view (as used in the gdm chooser). As I say, I haven't
tried the Classic view, but I assume it wouldn't need the change
because it has a System menu.

--
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

[John Lea (johnlea)]

Closed as dupe of #727823 with regards to Natty.