indicator applet needs renamed appropriately so people can find it.

[SilverWave]

Binary package hint: ubuntu-sounds

10.04 Lucid Beta 1
Ubuntu lucid (development branch) Release:10.04

Issue: miss named applet - not easy to re add as the applet is now called the "indicator applet" No mention of sound at all!

I found on boot-up that the sound applet was missing from my panel. A 10 second task turned into a 20 minute annoyance.

Cheers.

PS Love Lucid.

[Dylan McCall (dylanmccall)]

This could be resolved by changing the indicator applet's description.

Right now it is "An indicator of something that needs your attention on the desktop"
Not sure what an appropriate new string would be, but if it has key words like "sound," "volume" and "battery" it would at least appear via the search function.

However, I think it's really important to point out that this has already been the case; notification area has a very vague description: "Area where notification icons appear." There is no reasonable way someone can get from there to recognizing that volume control, network status and battery status appear there.

This, then, brings us to another issue: why is the problem only being observed now when we've had it forever? Why are people needing to re-add this panel applet?
SilverWave, could I ask how you came to not have the applet?
(My babbling here ultimately drifts into bug #519553).

[SilverWave (silverwave)]

Well if you want the gory details:
http://silverwav.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/taking-a-chance-on-lucid-10-04-beta-1/

:-)

[Vish (vish)]

Not a bug in ubuntu-sounds.

[Vish (vish)]

@SilverWave: also note , that the sound applet is not the only applet that is present in the indicator applet. So naming it as specific to "sound" is wrong

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

note that the indicator applet will be added to the configuration after the first boot on lucid for people upgrading with today updates

[baol (baol)]

A good alternative to renaming, since I've seen a lot of times people puzzled and frustrated by missing Window Selection applet or the Indicator applet, would be to have some sort of login check that the usually needed applet are in place. It can ask to add them or to not warn you again.

Another good option would be a "Restore missing applets" in the "Add to panel" dialog.

[Wolfgang Kufner (wolfgangkufner)]

A better icon in the "Add to Panel" dialog could also help a lot. The current one has nothing in common visually with the icons that people want to put on their panel (see attached file Indicator Applet.png). No icon in that list (like Main Menu and Menu Bar) would be better than the visually misleading icon we have now. But perhaps something can be designed that guides the users eye successfully. Having the sound volume icon in there would not hurt, as it is the most widely known example of an indicator.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

As of today, Gnome-panel is obsolete, and there are no plans to change descriptions of indicators in order to assist users adding applets to their panels.