lock icon in User Accounts is at best confusing

[Dan Kortschak]

This is a UI issue.

Description: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Release: 12.04

The lock/unlock button in User Accounts goes against the normal use of a lock to indicate the locked state, instead meaning the action of locking. This makes the icon confusing. A better approach would be to use the commonly used convention, and not have the lock in the button.

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

What's the "normal use"? This button is standard as it's provided by GTK.

[Dan Kortschak (dan-kortschak)]

On Sat, 2012-04-28 at 12:53 +0000, Milan Bouchet-Valat wrote:
> What's the "normal use"? This button is standard as it's provided by
> GTK.
>
Normal use would be the generally accepted and widely used metaphor -
that a closed lock means 'locked', 'safe', 'secure' etc. This is how it
has been used for almost the past decade by browsers to indicate that an
encrypted connection is being used, how the Mac OS uses it in the same
context as in User Accounts, and even how real world objects use the
metaphor (attached - a picture of a baby safety lock showing a closed
lock indicating locked and an open lock indicating unlocked).

I'm not entirely surprised that GTK gives this little bit of insanity,
but Ubuntu devs should be able to improve on it.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[mwilkes512 (mwilkes512)]

If you have a padlock on your garage and you're looking at it in the locked position what does that mean...your garage is currently locked. And the opposite is true as well...if it's in the unlocked position (visually), it'd be unlocked!

Using the reverse in Ubuntu is counter-intuitive and goes against core principles of making Ubuntu fun and easy to use.
Just a detail but it's idiosyncratic details like this that turn people off.

This needs fixed.

[Dan Kortschak (dan-kortschak)]

Submitted to GNOME Bugzilla as Bug 676912: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676912

[Dan Kortschak (dan-kortschak)]

One of my hobbies is to shout into the void; bugs are my favourite.