Show HUD above the application, not in the top left corner

[François Tissandier]

The HUD is currently opening in the top left corner. While it seems coherent with the location of the dash, and the global menu, I still find this a bit annoying to have to move my eyes all the way up to this corner when I'm using a window in the bottom right corner of the screen. I'm using high res screens, 1920x1080 or higher. So for a small window, it's really a lot of eye movements (or even mouse movements).

As the HUD is an overlay, why should it appear necessarily in the top left corner ? Why not simply ABOVE the application ? The global menu is moved to the top bar to give more room for the application, ok, it makes sense. But why this menu should appear up there, except for some coherence with the Dash ?

And also, remember what is HUD, it's meant to show information on top of what you are looking at, right ? Not on a far far away corner ;) Unity is supposed to be very efficient, and fast to use. I love to use the dash, without having to move my hand on the mouse. I would be even more efficient with the HUD if I didn't have to move my eyes up and down all the time. Press ALT, type, select, without moving my hands from the keyboard, and my eyes from my work.

And if for coherence reasons, you want to keep it up there, an option to display the dash centered on the desktop / HUD centered on the application would be really nice.

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

I must respectfully disagree. Having the HUD located in the center of the screen would obscure the current task, so I'm not sure how keeping it in the center would have any advantage in keeping the user focused on the current task. The global menu also opens from the top-left of the screen, so keeping the HUD there would also be more consistent with how regular menus work. If we were to also move the dash to the center for consistency, should we do the same for regular menus?

TBH it doesn't matter to me where the HUD is located, but I don't think the reasons provided here are strong enough to justify moving it to the center.

If centering is desired, then the HUD should just be able to maximize to fill the whole screen and have its contents "centered" in the same way the dash does (although as of right now from my testing the maximize button doesn't work for the HUD).

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

(For reference, I just reported the maximize button issue as bug 921950.)

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

needs design == status incomplete.

[François Tissandier (baloo)]

My report is not really similar with bug #921245, even if I agree with this bug. My comment is not only about which screen the HUD should appear on, but also where on the screen.

And Christopher, I understand your point. I know my idea is not great for consistency. But it's not really about focusing on the app, but on wasting no time moving your eyes all over the screen. I don't know which resolution you are using, but on a high resolution screen, I'm spending a lot of time moving the mouse to the dash or my eyes on the HUD. I know it's not that long, but still, the dash is already about saving some time by not using the mouse, and searching with keywords instead of clicks. So if the dash is focused on optimizing our work habits, the HUD should be also, right ?

And sorry if I was not clear, but I don't want to center the HUD on the screen, but center it above the application itself ! The HUD is application centric, so it could appear right above the application.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

I have removed the duplicate flag from this bug report as we wait for design feedback.