automatically adding newly installed applications makes the launcher unusable
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ayatana Design |
Opinion
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Unity |
Won't Fix
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
unity (Ubuntu) |
Invalid
|
Medium
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
This got spawned from bug 955147. https:/
This new concept essentially admits defeat that new users do not know about the dash. This started last cycle with moving the control-center icon into the launcher (thereby making it overflow on netbook screens), which already spawned a large discussion. Now this proposes to throw all limits over board and add tons of new icons to the launcher; NB that we make it very easy to install lots of new apps, and we go through great lengths to make it possible to create, find, and install third-party apps even post-release.
Now, this approach works around a temporary 5 minute question ("where does that app go"?), not by giving a 5-minute answer (quick tutorial or hint application which opens up the first couple of times), but by essentially redefining what the launcher is: a place where all applications go. This has several problems:
* Our launcher just isn't built for that -- it's efficient and useful for up to 10 to 20 icons, depending on your screen size. But after that it folds, and exponentially gets harder to use. It doesn't have text to describe the applications, does not have a stable order, and is just one-dimensional.
* It does not have most of the applications that are installed by default -- how do people find that?
* It teachs the wrong thing -- that the launcher is the place for all apps. It drives people further away from the dash, thereby aggravating the learning problem instead of solving it.
* It optimizes a thing which represents 0.00005% of the workload [1] at the expense of making the other 99.99995% much worse.
The spec itself points out that this "relies on heavy users removing unwanted launchers". Given how the launcher works, anyone who installs more than ~ 10 apps is a "heavy user", i. e. quite a large part of users.
The flaw in that spec is the conclusion it draws from the fact that users are not able to figure out how the dash works: You rely on users being able to remove apps again, but then they would again need to use the dash to start these applications, a capability you just denied them.
So in summary, this turns the launcher into something like the app launcher that e. g. Android has -- place for all application. But as it's not built for this and there are no improvements for at least mitigating the effects of this change.
Making the launcher useful to hold an arbitrary number of apps requires it to become two-dimensional, sorted, searchable, and touch friendly. We already have that -- the dash. So if we want to go that direction, could we just not use the dash as we have it, and instead change how to invoke it?
[1] Assuming a very pessimistic scenario: using Ubuntu for two hours a day for a year, and 50% not finding out how the dash works in 5 minutes.
tags: | added: rls-mgr-p-tracking |
Changed in unity: | |
status: | Incomplete → Won't Fix |
Changed in unity (Ubuntu): | |
status: | Triaged → Invalid |
Changed in ayatana-design: | |
status: | New → Opinion |
Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.