I like the Ubuntu Community Wallpapers that "Changes throughout the day" for my background. However, when the background image changes, it is slightly shocking as the old image is instantly replaced by the new image.
Written by AndrewLuecke the 6 May 12 at 12:36.
New
When an application/game is missing a shared library, it simply never launches. There is never an error, or any indication why. Those who are tech saavy, will open console and often find Error while loading shared libraries: libSDL_mixer-1.2.so.0". It is most common for commercial games and apps, or older linux apps. Having any program close without saying why, or no feedback on how to fix it is a clear obvious usability fail. Some real-world examples are:
* World of Goo from the humble bundles (deb).
* X-Plane 9 (I haven't tested X-Plane 10).
* Skype
This issue is widespread, and has likely gone unnoticed because the actual problem has never had a generic means of correction (and the solution offered is generally "install library blah blah blah", "oh, it works, thanks", "close bug"). Windows has similar issues, however, at least they show an error that the DLL is missing!
If I have many customers, each one with one folder "bill", "jim", ... and a subfolder on each named "Sales", when I search for "Sales" in Unity (in main dsh or in files-folder lens) several "Sales" folders appear in the "files and folders" results. I don't know which is the customer (parent folder) it belongs to until I open it... many times the wrong one. Both left-click and right-click do nothing but opening.
The classic desktop with floating windows, mouse and keyboard actually requires 3 hands. 2 for keyboard and 1 for mouse. Instead of having 3 hands we handle the problem by switching between mouse and keyboard. Switching requires a lot of time, we all know it. Its just unproductive.
So that many people prefer console, tilingwm and other keyboardoriented software. Usually those solutions have a steep learning curve and are unpopular for that reason.
Ubuntu HUD is a major step towards a solution.
1. It's cleaning your field of view.
2. Its building bridges between the classic gui-solution and the console fraction. Providing people with productive workflows and flat learning curve.
Sometimes its hard to learn new shortcuts. Its hard to find them and hard to remember them. UbuntuHUD does support learning shortcuts and ive got a suggestions to improve this.
In the far right upper corner, there's the Ubuntu icon under which access to 'System Settings' etc can be found. When trying to select 'System Settings', it often happens that users accidentally hit 'Switch User Account' from the neighboring user accounts menu.
Reason:
The user accounts menu icon is directly next to the Ubuntu settings icon. And because the space these icons take up on the panel is so small, but the menu itself is much wider, it easily happens that users accidentally open the menu that is next to the left when trying to hit the first menu entry of the menu that was originally opened. This is because the menu entries start on the left side, of course. Users aim for these entries by making a diagonal move.
So, when making this diagonal move, they often accidentally hover over the neighboring user accounts menu if they don't move their mouse strictly vertical. This is very unintuitive and in the course of usage a thing users don't think of. And because this happens quickly and they expect to hit the desired menu entry, they also make a mouse-click right away. But then they end up hovering over the user account menu, thus opening it and accidentally clicking 'Switch User Account' (and effectively logging out *dang*).
Written by weeeirdfishes the 10 May 12 at 21:35.
New
The function of the panel does not warrant the use of such a significant area on a permanent basis. It undermines the popular tabs-on-top browser UI, where, by having tabs at the very top of the screen, they are easier to click on - as the pointer cannot pass them vertically. Menus are no longer integral either with the HUD.