Contributor twright

in the auto plugin install wizard for firefox the recommended plugin (that which is best for most users) should be marked in bold and followed by (recommended), new users don't have a clue which is the right one so just pick the 1st and are then unable to easily access content

I think you should put a lot of effort to come up with some documentation supporting novice programmers to use existing frameworks in an optimal way to support Ubuntu.

Questions that could arose in their minds when they want to do a program for Ubuntu:

-> How do I access stock icons from my prog?
-> How do I use Notifications?
-> How to include File dialogs?
-> How do I use the common permission-dialog?
-> How can I use dbus?
-> How do I come from code to actual program used by mass
-> How do I ensuer it can be used not only by gnome or kde or whatever...?
...
...
...

I guess this would lead to more fresh programms but also in a more consistent appearence over all of them. Of course a single point of entry should be used for most spread programming languages

Happy for your reactions...

I use now wicd and it's , ,much better than NetworkManager.. More work is needed for NetworkManager

(See multiples duplicates and comments about more requested improvement)

Often after doing an update the double arrow icon will appear indicating a need to reboot. But if you click it, no reason is given as to why reboot is needed.

My idea is that clicking on the icon (or a "Why?" link for more information) should indicate why the OS thinks a reboot is needed so I can make a decision about whether to do it now or later.

my other ideas

Google gears allows a website to synchronise a website so that it works offline, and then later synchronises the changes when it returns online.

Brainstorm could use it to:
1) sync all the new ideas that have been added since they last logged in
2) Sync all the latest comments that have been added since they last logged in
3) Allow offline idea creation.

This means that Joe Bloggs could synchronise Brainstorm in the morning, and on his train ride or the ride to school write comments, and apply his votes (and since its a long train ride, he'll have lots of time to think about what to do). Then when he returns home, it automatically applies all of his comments and votes. He can also write up ideas on the bus, and then automatically submit them when he gets back home too.

Google Gears is a technology (licenced under The BSD License) that allows websites to work offline, and later sync with the server when the computer (or website) is online again. It is only 2MB, and wont slow down system performance at all, cross platform, and already works in FF3. It also makes the use of websites such as Google documents much more usable for laptop users, so they no longer need open office.

Some websites it works with it natively are:
Google Docs
Google Reader
Google Calender (support is under development, but there are hacks to get it working now)
Remember The milk

In fact, with Greasemonkey, you can inject gears code in to allow offline use of websites like wikipedia too!

Technologies such as Google Gears and prism will not only allow us to become less dependant on installed programs (such as openoffice), but will soon be commonplace. People want to be able to use Google Docs as well as any other installed program, whilst not having to install it.

currently search engine shipped with default hardy and previous versions of ubuntu doesnt allow me to search all drives at once.not to disappoint ubuntu but xp does have
this feature i think maybe from beginning of win 95/98.so probably its time we too have more advance features in search engine.
*** advance features should allow me to search by document type like doc,txt,html,png,mpeg,mp3,iso etc(of course most popular formats)
***custom search based on wild card characters(?,*)
even though we have tracker and google desktop they require indexing data on hdd every time to start search which is worst because user is always want his search to be fast.
beagle,catfish are another solution but those aren't officially supported nor developed.
so gnome search-engine needs bigger improvements.i was surprise when i switched to ubuntu to find that it doesnt show those drives by default like d drive(or label).i have to manually select this drive by browsing,pity.

I think some of the screenshots on www.ubuntu.com are outdated.

For example, the menu screenshot on this page: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu is not the menu we see in 8.04.

Also, some text is outdated as well. For example, this page: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/kubuntu says "KDE version 3.5.5 is the current stable release".

There are lots of other examples on the website. I think to use up-to-date screenshots is very important. They would give new users a better and more accurate impression of Ubuntu compared with old screenshots.

The Ubuntu startup and shutdown splashscreens with the Ubuntu logo and a progress bar underneath it really looks like something from the 90ies (Windows 95 anyone?)

I don't know if there are any hindrances to using images or animations of higher resolutions than what is currently used (for machines that supports it), but I really think Ubuntu can do better here.

This may be an unimportant improvement compared to many other ideas here, but it should be a very quick and easy fix, and it will really help when you try to convince regular folks to make the switch (a graphically stunning desktop is _so_ important when you show it to occasional users!).

Ok, so say you want to upload a file to an email on Gmail, you click browse and you get the 'list' view. Now this list view is ok for documents, but when it comes to photos, and lots of them it is useless.

It is slow, and the images in the right preview are small and are slow to render. So I am proposing that we add the normal icon view to the browser, thus enabling you to view image thumbnails, and also makes it a lot more appealing.

Example: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3044/2581312401_375cefa4b2.jpg?v=0

See what you think.

When a USB stick (or some other kind of data storage) is pulled out, while something is written on it or while part of the data is still cached in the RAM, freeze all file operations to the device and demand it to be plugged in again. After it is plugged in again, complete the remaining operations and unmount the device.
If the warning dialogue is canceled by the user, then cancel all operations and regard the device as unmounted.

edit: Thanks to Auzy for finding the very good description of this in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1515/ which was lost due to being incorrectly marked as a duplicate of something completely different.

When I use "Add/remove program", I often want to see more information than what is displayed a this time.

I will be great if more informations about the program we're looking can be displayed in the bottom frame.

These informations can stored in an online database, which contains the latest informations about the program.

For example, when we click on one program in "Add/remove program", we can see some extra info coming from the web :

- Brief Description of the program (already exists)
- Link to the developer's website
- Big button "Install this program (queue)"
- Rating (already exists)
- Latest available version of the program
- What's new in this version (multi-language)
- link "post a bug" relative to this program (launchpad or mail to developer's mailbox)
- post an idea relative to this program (brainstorm)
- Gallery of screenshots (to be discussed)

These informations could be grabbed from a wiki which represents the perfect non-technical documentation that all newbie could read first.

ps : this was already discussed in the comments of idea brainstorm n°9685 ( http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/9685/ )

pps : For those who knows the iphone, it's similar to the "more info" tab when you install a program. It's only grabbing texts and screenshots from the developer's page.

[....]

I noticed that when I want to add extra fonts in nautilus I have to type fonts://// or something in address bar. how many addresses of this type exist in nautilus? Why we can not find them at first glance?
My idea is to add these places to somewhere in appropriate place of gui of nautilus.

The way to manage ipods with rhythmbox, exaile, listen or even with amarok, is very incomplete.

1- The only way to manage ipods is manualy!!!! When I tryed to synchronize my ipod I couldnt believe that there was no option to do it automatically, making an exact copy of the current music library.

Please, this is very basic!!! if I spend time in my computer to have my music library organized, the only thing I want is not having to spend my time twice to do the same work on my ipod to organize it the way I want. It is ridiculous and a waste of time.

2- I dont know why does this happen, but there is a problem with the music transferred to an ipod. And I am not talking a bout a very new ipod model, mine is from the 3rd generation. When music is transferred with any of the programs I said before, in some parts of some songs there are some seconds that are "corrupted" or something like that. I dont know how to explain it. It is like the transferred song was merged in a few seconds with another song of the library. And sometimes there is also a little bit of noise in the middle of a song. As I said, I dont know why does this happen, but it should be fixed very urgently.
Or am I the only one with this strange problem?

Sorry for my English.

Leave a comment if the vote is negative, please, so I can improve something.

Human Murine And CLearlooks Theme were removed from Hardy Beta in latest update.

The new themes were considered a improvement over the old human engine based theme but in my point of view it is difficult to compare because the difference between them is more then just color palette they use different engine .

Human theme in my point of view was a good compromise but now we have better alternative.Even if these theme can not be made default due to some political or technical reason ( still waiting for the question to be answered ) .It can still be made optional it is far better then the other theme included which are the reminiscent of the old days of gnome without cario.

Currently Ubuntu uses the "Ubuntulooks" GTK engine to draw widgets, which was forked from Clearlooks some time ago, but this engine appears to be no longer maintained

For more detail about the theme go to
http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/03/02/two-new-themes-arrive-in-ubuntu-804/
It provides nice overview of the new themes in hardy but murrine image is outdated it does not use striped menu bar and has same clean interface as clearlooks based theme.

For changes in the clearlooks based engine go to
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/gnome-2-22-review.ars/3
it gives a nice summary of the changes in clearlooks engine which will help u to know small subtle improvements which are also present in human clearlooks theme

Ubuntu question relating to this
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/human-theme/+question/28643

[....]

A default GUI for PulseAudio would be great, the ability to control the volume for each program is a very useful thing...

[edit] For those who want it, just install padevchooser (PulseAudio Device Chooser) through synaptic, it also install all the other packages needed...

One of the most annoying stuff in Rhythmbox: when you close the window, it quits the application. I just wanted to get rid of the window on the desktop, that's all.

I know some person like this behavior. So a solution would be to add a checkbox to enable/disable the "hide on close" in the preferences.

Edit> IMO, once an application is in the systray, "close" differs from "quit" (i.e. you "close" the window, but you don't "quit" the program).

Pressing CTRL+Z on Desktop and Nautilus undo the last action.
for example when moving a file, CTRL+Z move back that file.

It would be great if the upcoming (K,X)Ubuntu Releases would have better support for digital video broadcasting.

In Gutsy Gibbon e.g. it is horrible for me for getting my DVB-T Stick (Hauppauge Nova-T) to work. It's an everyday application, that is not easy for an everyday user.

People coming from windows are used to their IM apps showing a notification window when something noteworthy happens. Pidgin plays a sound but shows nothing, which can be confusing to some users -where did that beep come from?- and leave the feeling that it's an inferior product compared with their previous IM client.

I think that pidgin-libnotify should be installed and active by default in fresh ubuntu installs. Pidgin-libnotify is a Pidgin plugin that shows events -buddies logging in or out, new messages...- using libnotify. It takes barely 14k and offers information that is familiar to newcomers and useful for everyday users, and perfectly fits Pidgin sounds, in a fashion
that is integrated with gnome because it resembles the way that many other gnome apps show their important info - that is, through libnotify.