Comment 2 for bug 705187

On 02/26/2011 02:34 AM, Dylan McCall wrote:
> Thanks for brining this up, Jeff.
>
> I'm targeting this to a little later in the cycle when we have a good
> picture what people will need to know. I'm a little opposed to a whole
> set of dedicated “how to use Unity” slides mainly because we should
> expect the interface to explain itself. If the slideshow has to explain
> it, we've already failed every user who doesn't look at the slideshow.
> Certainly, it should be brought up in a few places and we should make
> sure everything in here makes sense both with Unity and without Unity,
> but I always worry about creating a tone of “this system is complicated;
> read the manual or you're doomed!”

That's a good point, and re-reading my original report, that is a bit
what it sounds like, no? But, my concern is that we probably DO have to
explain it. People who are not familiar with computers, I think, will
have less of a time with Unity than someone like me, for example, who
has been using computers since the old days, and has used the standard
Windows style environment since 1995 (earlier actually with Win3.1).

Even in my case, I sometimes use "non-standard" environments like
busybox, or back in the day I was a huge fan of WindowMaker, but for the
most part, 99% of all Linux desktops look similar to Windows desktops,
if you really think about it... taskbar at top or bottom, "Start" menu
and maybe other menu items... some sort of notification area in one
corner... and Unity blows all that out of the water.

To be honest, I even have trouble with OSX's desktop because I am so
accustomed to having a certain type of structure to the desktop.

BUT don't think that means I don't want Unity to be there. I'm actually
rather excited to see how well it's going to turn out, and I'm hoping
that the world will embrace it. I'm just concerned that the core of our
user base will have a hard time with it, and less than experienced users
may well have a hard time if they go from say, Maverick being their
first Linux to Natty and immediately having to learn a new desktop
environment.

> That said, I'm happy to be surprised! A single Unity slide could be
> quite nice. If we add a Unity slide, we should probably nix something
> else to save space. (These things are actually pretty expensive when we
> account for all the translations). I was thinking of revising it, but
> the Firefox one feels totally useless right now and it doesn't feel like
> there's much room for it to grow. It might be a good candidate.

That would be fine with me... just "something" that lets users know
"Hey, in case you don't follow slashdot, OMGUbuntu, LWN and the rest of
the F/OSS jounalistic world, there's a good chance you'll be seeing
Unity, an entirely new way of looking at the desktop. It's the bees
knees and it ain't yer daddy's desktop environment"

heh... for a moment, I pictured the little girl in Jurassic Park with
the SGI 3D Filesystem "This is UNIX! I know this!" heh...

> I think this would be a little different from the other slides, since to
> be particularly helpful we'll want to reference places in a screenshot
> from text that will be translated. If there is a really il8n-safe way to
> do that (numbered dots?), we're in luck! Perhaps this would be a good
> opportunity to introduce some terminology and stuff that will be talked
> about in more detail later.

Another thought I had was maybe a flash or other sort of automated
introduction to Unity that can play the first time a user logs in.
Though I don't know what kind of space something like that would eat up
on the ISO either. Something like a tutorial or something.

> We may be able to add subtle cues to the existing stuff, and the first
> slide should certainly bring Unity up as the big new thing. (With a nice
> screenshot as well…). I think it would be perfect if we could link to
> another resource that really delves into what Unity is about, like
> unity.ubuntu.com for end users. There are lots of hidden treats that
> would be perfect for an engaging series of ten second video tutorials,
> and we certainly don't have room for them in the slideshow (and neither
> do most people!) :)

And that's actually even better than my tutorial idea, really. Though
wouldn't be very helpful for people with slow/no internet connection,
but for the majority of users though, something like a unity.ubuntu.com
or ubuntu.com/unity tutorial section would be pretty neat... especially
if it had some things like "These are easter eggs you can find" or
"Here's some really cool tricks you can do with Unity"

I absolutely love the videos similar to this you can find on the tubes
that show what you can do with the right combination of compiz plugins
and configurations. So something like "Cool Unity Tricks" would be
awesome :)

--
Jeff Lane - Hardware Certification Engineer and Test Tools Developer
Ubuntu Ham: W4KDH
Freenode IRC: bladernr or bladernr_
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