1) closing and opening the lid to cause sleep is unrelated to this matter. Regardless of Suspend use, if a user intends to shutdown/restart the computer, the power-cog is where the GUI user is going to go. If a user never shuts down or restarts unless explicitly prompted, that does NOT change the fact that the power-cog is the GUI area where this is accomplished. It is not meaningless to them to "futz" with the cog icon. It makes perfect sense as this is the location that restart/shutdown is accomplished.
2) it is a poor design decision to use popups to communicate that a restart is needed. It is not done in the normal Ubuntu method of communicating information (i.e., displaying a rectangular box in the upper right corner of the screen). Instead the popup is reminiscent of popups from the world wide web. Something few people appreciate. And if the popup box is closed (whether on purpose or by mistake), where does the user have to go to restart? The cog icon.
Both my parents did not understand that the popup icon demanding restart was from Ubuntu. Both my parents did (intuitively) understand however that the red cog icon was a communication from Ubuntu telling them something. And when they clicked the red icon they saw in red lettering what was needed from them. MUCH BETTER DESIGN. Canonical/Ubuntu is overall very good at design choices. But this popup choice for restart is a regression. Hopefully you guys can/will reconsider it?
Thanks for the reply, Matthew.
1) closing and opening the lid to cause sleep is unrelated to this matter. Regardless of Suspend use, if a user intends to shutdown/restart the computer, the power-cog is where the GUI user is going to go. If a user never shuts down or restarts unless explicitly prompted, that does NOT change the fact that the power-cog is the GUI area where this is accomplished. It is not meaningless to them to "futz" with the cog icon. It makes perfect sense as this is the location that restart/shutdown is accomplished.
2) it is a poor design decision to use popups to communicate that a restart is needed. It is not done in the normal Ubuntu method of communicating information (i.e., displaying a rectangular box in the upper right corner of the screen). Instead the popup is reminiscent of popups from the world wide web. Something few people appreciate. And if the popup box is closed (whether on purpose or by mistake), where does the user have to go to restart? The cog icon.
Both my parents did not understand that the popup icon demanding restart was from Ubuntu. Both my parents did (intuitively) understand however that the red cog icon was a communication from Ubuntu telling them something. And when they clicked the red icon they saw in red lettering what was needed from them. MUCH BETTER DESIGN. Canonical/Ubuntu is overall very good at design choices. But this popup choice for restart is a regression. Hopefully you guys can/will reconsider it?