Ubuntu Manual

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Fitts’ Law is being thrown around quite often. Some people seem to think that it is all about how the edges of the screen and especially the corners are easy/fast to hit with the pointer. We have to thank Tog for that This is at least not entirely ... [More] wrong, but I also saw claims it would have to do with targets becoming harder to hit if you place other targets in close proximity. It really only covers: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. It has to be noted that this does only refer to linear movement, so the size of the target has to be measured along the axis of movement. Here’s a nice article with pictures (and the actual formula). Filed under: Planet Ubuntu, Thoughts [Less]

Its official! I just found a new favourite torrent site: Kickasstorrents! I used isohunt before i found out about how good kickasstorrents actaully is, now by all means isohunt is a good torrent site, but it lacks some really nice and useful features ... [More] that kickasstorrents has. For example, on kickasstorrents, if i hover my cursor over the comments icon in a torrent listing it displays the last few comments made on that torrent, this not only is very cool but saves alot of time when trying to find a good torrent. Another feature worth mentioning is is the fact that you can subscribe to several different rss feeds to get notified when new torrents get added, there are many different categories such as games, movies, tv, music, applications, anime and even one for direct downloads. Although there is much, much more you can appreciate so i encourage you to check it out for yourself at kickasstorrents.com! Enjoy! [Less]

In the world, there are companies and businesses that create products for clients. There are automobile manufacturers that build cars, there are food companies that make canned spaghetti and there are IT firms that design software for businesses. ... [More] All of these companies rely on their clients. They are there for one purpose – to serve the client needs, because if they don’t do this, then they won’t have a business. In this same sense, we can think of Canonical and the community as a company that’s creating a product for some clients. In our situation, the product is Ubuntu and the client is the end user. There are over ten million users of Ubuntu world wide. That means that there are ten million people who have made a conscious decision to install Ubuntu on their computer. If these ten million people weren’t here, then we wouldn’t exist. We serve the end user, and because we serve them, we want to keep them happy by providing what they want. We create things that the end user wants, and we often under estimate the value of their opinion. This can happen in design, this can happen in packaging, marketing, software development, any of the areas that Ubuntu encompasses. If an automobile company, let’s say Honda, decided that it would switch the foot pedals from Clutch, Brake, Accelerator, to the other way around, Accelerator, Brake and then Clutch. Their argument could be that it is better to accelerate with your left foot, and change gears with your right foot, because they’ve done some research or perhaps they just like it that way. Could you imagine the outcry if this happened? Not only would it cause a lot of accidents as customers tried to adjust to the new positions, but it would also ensure that Honda went bankrupt as customers chose another company, and another product that satisfied their needs. Remember that a need could actually be that they don’t want to change from what they’re used to. It’s all well and good changing something, but at what cost? Sometimes it is possible for us to get ahead of ourselves and believe that innovation can only be achieved by radically modifying things. Sometimes it’s possible for us to not see the wood for the trees and believe that we are doing something good while being completely oblivious to the fact that what we are doing can affect millions of people. So before you think about changing something that might affect a lot of people, firstly do some research and conduct some surveys and ask yourself – “is this what our client actually wants or needs?” If you have conducted the surveys and research correctly and thoroughly, this question should be very easy to answer. You will never be able to successfully create something for someones needs, if you never make an effort to find out what those needs are. [Less]

UPDATE: I’ve added in “Fixed!” where things are fixed, and “Probably won’t be changed” where it’s more than likely nothing will be changed. In this post I’m going to list 16 things that I think could be improved in Lucid. I’m going to try my best to ... [More] address the issues in detail and offer solutions. Of course, all of this is also a matter of opinion too. The object of this post is to make you think about ways we could improve each one. I’ll try to link to bugs where there are bugs, but a lot of these are quite new design decisions only present in 10.04 and hence don’t have bugs filed. All of these screenshots were taken about two hours after I installed Lucid Lynx alpha 3, daily build from Saturday March 6th 2010. Read: after the UI freeze. Window Controls There are two things wrong with the new window controls in the Lynx. Firstly, the controls are on the left. This is bad because: Ubuntu users are used to them being on the right Windows converts to Ubuntu will have yet another reason why they don’t want to switch There is no particular reason for moving them to the left, it’s change for the sake of change It makes windows unbalanced (window controls, window options, window title, sidebars and breadcrumbs etc are now all on the left) GNOME upstream has them on the right which reduces compatibility and could cause problems in the future It’s not easy for the average user to change them back to the right (Gconf is NOT easy!) Fitt’s Law comes into play. Lots of small targets in the same area, it’s harder to the right one. Secondly, the button order has been shuffled around so that maximize and minimize are swapped. This is bad because: Ubuntu users aren’t used to this In fact, no one is used to this Close is on the inside – which is completely illogical It breaks other themes and makes them look ugly: It is also pretty obvious that people don’t like the change: omgubuntu.co.uk poll Daviey’s blog leftyb’s blog Richard Johnson’s blog kbps Scott Richie’s post Comments on Ivanka Majic’s post Comments on this post Comments on this post at omgubuntu.co.uk The UF forum thread about this post Of course, if the design team consulted the community or conducted any research whatsoever before deciding on this, they would have already realized it’s a bad idea. To see more on why moving the window controls to the left is a bad idea, read this post. Bug #403135 – Notification area background transparency Fixed! (in the default themes at least) This bug has been around since Karmic alpha, and just appears to be gathering dust. It affects a tonne of non-default applications that users are likely to try out, such as Pidgin, Banshee, VLC etc. Basically the problem seems to be that certain applications aren’t appearing in the panel with transparent backgrounds, even though they have transparent .png images in /usr/share/pixmaps and the like. I have noticed that it’s fixed when using Clearlooks, Kin, Homosapien or Turrican. So it’s obviously a theme thing – why the “professional” default themes have this bug but community themes don’t is beyond me. Rhythmbox search for plugin This is the reason I switched to Banshee. Even though I have ubuntu-restricted-extras installed, Rhythmbox prompts me to install plugins pretty much on every second song. It does it all the time when loading my collection into the library. I have all the gstreamer plugins in the world, but it still won’t go away. The silly thing is that it actually starts playing the song that it apparently can’t play, but when you click cancel it skips to the next one. Searching for plugins never returns results. Bug report: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=529690 Some possible solutions: Have an option in the Rhythmbox preferences to disable plugin search Have the plugin search program remember if it’s already searched for that type of format, and not search again Increase the number of formats available to it so that the search results are more fruitful Have a checkbox in the plugin search dialog that says “don’t search for plugins again.” Also, note how crappy the close button looks on windows such as this that don’t have maximize and minimize options. Software Center progress bar Fixed! The black box around it is actually part of it – I didn’t put that there. Why this progress bar isn’t nice: It has a big black border around it which doesn’t match the rest of the Software Center style It is using a red that isn’t in the Ubuntu colour pallete It is using a red that doesn’t appear anywhere else in the Software Center It doesn’t have the padding set correctly, so it appears out of place. I am going to assume that this will be fixed at some stage in the next few weeks. Bug #533535 Gnome menu icons  This one has been talked about recently on Planet Ubuntu. I don’t care what anyone says, having some icons here and no icons there just looks inconsistent. You either have to have them all or have none at all, you can’t have a mix of both. Especially now that there are huge gaps in menus where icons look like they should be – it appears to be a bug and has actually been reported as a bug many times. If the GNOME developers *have* to take away the icons by default, they need an easy way for users to put them back in. An easy way is not a gconf key. An easy way would be an option in “Appearance Preferences.” Notification area margins Once again, another odd design decision that just screams unprofessional. The checkbox is floating in a random column on its own, but then the icons are in another column? I would love to know the design reasoning behind this. Bug #533548 Notification area The notification area now takes up almost 1/2 of my 1280px wide top panel. For those of us who don’t like having two panels and want their window list up the top, it leaves hardly any room to show open windows. Just look at the spacing around the Rhythmbox icon, you could drive a bus through there! The current panel spacing is bad because: It uses up too much of your top panel It is inconsistent compared with the rest of the theme It is inconsistent with other items on the panel* * Compare the gap between Rhythmbox and the volume icon with the gap between the wireless network icon and Pidgin. Another thing that’s bad about this new notification area is the fact that each item isn’t an individual applet. Fixed! For example, say I want to remove the Messaging menu because I don’t like it or don’t use it. This is actually a fairly plausible scenario, many people don’t use Evolution because they prefer webmail services such as Gmail. Also, many people use Pidgin instead of Empathy because, well, because Pidgin is just better. So in this scenario, pretty much 75% of the functionality of the messaging menu is now useless. My only option is to remove the entire notification applet, so I lose Rhythmbox, the battery status indicator, and the volume indicator. But for some reason the wireless applet is separate. Solution? You could either separate all of the applets into individual ones, but I think the best way would be to group them into “system status” and “applications.” For example, in the “system status” applet you could have things that tell you information: Battery indicator Wireless indicator Volume indicator Crash report notification Updates available CPU scaling etc And in the “applications” area you could have a tray like section that has stores the icons for applications: Rhythmbox Messaging Menu Pidgin Desktop Drapes Transmission Banshee etc Bug #533544 Default font size and default pointer Probably won’t be changed It’s about time that Ubuntu changed the default font size from 10, 96 dpi to something a bit smaller. I use size 8, 96 dpi with Sans and it’s perfectly legible. Having a gigantic font size suggests that our operating system is a toy for kids. “The effect of having the font so large is evident from the outset – menus appear never-ending, dialogue windows seem disproportioned and the entire feel given off is that of a toy.” Here’s stock Firefox with with ascending font sizes. Notice how much more room Firefox has with 8px – practical for netbook users, no? Bug #533552 Also, the default pointer? Why is it still set to DMZ (white)? That is so Windows 98. Whiteglass is a much more acceptable pointer and fits with the new theme a lot better. Images and some wording taken from omgubuntu.co.uk with Joey’s approval, see this article for more information on fonts. Ctrl+Alt+Delete Probably won’t be changed This should launch System Monitor, instead of logging you out. The rationale is that Windows users coming from Windows to Ubuntu will instinctively hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete when something goes wrong, which will bring up the shutdown/logout menu. They wouldn’t have been expecting that. The solution would be to assign another key combination for log out – or just have no key combination at all because it’s easy to get to the log out option by just clicking on the panel applet in the right hand corner. Then you could have Ctrl+Alt+Delete launch gnome-system-monitor by default, which is the Ubuntu equivalent to Task Manager on Windows. Here, users can kill processes that have frozen. Even for non Windows converts, it’s a useful tool to have set as a keyboard shortcut. Pidgin should minimize to messaging menu, instead of closing Why does Pidgin close now when I close my buddy list? It should minimize to the messaging menu like Empathy does. It is possible to enable the tray icon so it closes to the tray, but that looks ugly due to the transparency bug above and the inconsistent notification area spacing. Actually, it does show up in the messaging menu – but it doesn’t stay there if you close the buddy list window. This is pretty counter intuitive, if it’s listed in the messaging menu alongside other permanent apps that are listed even when they’re not open, you would expect Pidgin to remain open when you close the buddy list. Computer Janitor should not be in Ubuntu Not only does this program destroy your system by removing dependencies and third party software that you’ve installed from .debs – Fixed!, but it also looks hideous and unfinished with incorrect padding and missing sections. Bug #533559 The entire program isn’t clear on what it’s supposed to do. Not only are the section titles wrong (see below), but even the name of the application is wrong. Firstly, “Computer.” It doesn’t clean your computer, it cleans your packages. If it really cleaned your computer, it would remove old kernels, run virus scans, clear the internet browsing history etc. Secondly, “janitor” is rarely used outside the United States of America, down here in New Zealand we use “cleaner.” I’m pretty sure “janitor” wouldn’t translate that well either. Try translating an American word like janitor into Hungarian, Chinese or Arabic for example. Bug #533557 Bug #533558 Another thing that’s wrong with the naming is the section titles. Pretend you are a new user: Unused what? That doesn’t make sense, because Google Chrome and Skype appear there and I use those every day. Recommended what? Recommended applications to install? To download? Recommend what I should feed my cat? Optimize what? Defragment? Run a virus scan? Clear my browsing history? This application needs a tonne of work before it’s up to the standard required for the default install, and I honestly think it is dangerous to have it available to new users and it should be removed from Lucid immediately until it’s ready. I suggest it’s renamed to “Package Cleaner,” removed from Lucid, and re-targeted to Lucid+1. The concept is good, but the execution is terrible. Preferences menu is huge! How are we ever going to sell Ubuntu as “easy to use” when the default preferences menu is bigger than most screens! This menu needs a serious clean up and half of the stuff could be merged. Or you could just use the Gnome Control Panel. Volume applet now looks terrible This applet now looks a lot worse than the Karmic one, in my opinion. Why? The slider is too short and doesn’t let you fine tune volume properly The two options, “mute all” and “sound preferences” are not grouped together There’s a random 1px line that inexplicably runs underneath the slider box Fixed! The max volume icon doesn’t have enough padding, compared to the no volume icon Fixed! Volume changes appear in the notification system – you would expect the volume controls to have the same style The proportions of the volume indicator applet are inconsistent with the wireless connection menu, the messaging menu, the MeMenu, the date/time/calender, the rhythmbox applet and the user session menu – all of these are longer than they are wide, but this one is wider than it is long The background colour for the slider looks out of place, it isn’t necessary. Fixed! To be honest, this applet does nothing right except change your volume when you move it. In fact, with this track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if moving the slider to the right actually decreased the volume! Bug #533560 Here’s an image that illustrates the proportions of the applets. Click on it for a full size version. What happened to the nice battery stats window? There used to be a nice little UI window that would pop up when you clicked on the battery name in the applet. I don’t have Karmic installed anymore, so I can’t show you. But it was nice, trust me. Now you get this: This information is cool, but the average user doesn’t need this amount of information, they just want their battery to be able to work, and they want to see how much time they’ve got left before it runs out. Perhaps they’ll want to know what the model number is if they need to replace it at some stage – but that’s it. Especially when half of the information reported is incorrect. I wish my battery lasted 12 hours. MeMenu doesn’t pick up the image from About Me Fixed! When you click on the picture in the MeMenu, it opens up the “About Me” application, implying that it takes the image from there. You can fill in the details and choose a picture, but the picture won’t be displayed in the MeMenu – even after a restart. Oh and once again, note how fantastic the new theme window controls look when their isn’t a maximize option. MeMenu text box doesn’t explain what it does Okay, you got your new user shoes on again? As a new user, please tell me what the text box does in the following image: If I was going to take an educated guess at what you thought, it would be that the text box updates your IM status, because directly underneath it is a list of IM statuses. Right? Wrong. It actually updates any accounts you have set on Gwibber. In my case, Twitter and Facebook. What happens if the user doesn’t have either of these? Also, broadcast accounts? What are we, a radio station now? [Less]

This comment was posted on Ivanka Majic’s article “Those pesky buttons” by Murat Güne and I think it’s worth re-posting here. Ivanka, your post is very much welcome in that it has broken the official silence and will perhaps start a dialogue, but ... [More] since the new branding was introduced, what lots of people, especially those on the periphery of design and development discourse, rather than the center, have been expecting to hear is a concrete statement of reasoning regarding the current button positioning in the new themes, as opposed to “some correspondence”. This post, by providing an outline of your thought process in the internal UX&D team meetings, provides the latter, but still not the former. You list the questions you asked, the whiteboard shot outlines the examples you studied; that’s all good, but there’s no trace of the rationale for the actual change. It’s indeed hard to tell if the change is “better or worse”, and for people to present any useful feedback, without knowing what it is that you intended to achieve with it. And this situation brings about all sorts of reactionary accusations of the design being a “ripoff”, being “unoriginal”, being “by Mac users for Mac users”, etc. and causes a lot of negative buzz. If this is just an experiment (which, given that Lucid is still pre-Beta, is very much expectable) without much of a strong rationale, at least at this point, then we should make that known too, so that the placement is not going to be received as if it were set in stone. We can really do better at communicating the intentions behind radical changes to users and development branch testers, and I’m willing to help with that. [Less]

If you just let things happen in a collaborative project with design/artwork needs, you will likely see a few people creating proposals that mostly cover the same ground. They all will base there work on their own assumptions regarding various ... [More] aspects of the project. This might not even happen consciously, but be more about gut feeling. The same applies to other collaborators providing feedback. Everyone has an opinion on matters of design. People talk a lot of what they like or don’t like, seldom giving reasons. This way there is no shared idea of what should be achieved and how to judge proposals. No common ground for collaboration. A collaborative project should have a documented mission statement/vision/set of goals. You need to define where you wan to end up, before you can take care of getting there. Otherwise you rely on chance alone. This is especially important for artwork, because it shouldn’t be about individual taste or the latest fashion, but rather be constructed to help further the goals of the project. Even making some people unhappy is better than having no direction. You should work from a mission statement, a project briefing, towards defining your audience, the desired tone and your message. This will be your measure to decide what is and isn’t appropriate regarding design and artwork. Your audience, your users might be quite different from your collaborators. There’s also the aspect of breaking a big problem down into a set of smaller ones. This helps with covering every aspect and detail. As far as there is subjectivity, it’s much better to deal with it in small parts instead of at once, for the entire design. Filed under: Illustration, Planet Ubuntu, Thoughts [Less]

I’ve been designing a new website for the Lunar Numbat project. Click the images for a full size view. Here’s the first idea, which is fairly generic and boring: It’s not “spacey” enough, not unique enough. Hence, I made this one: The problem I ... [More] have is finding a unique design that’s both relevant to the project (high-tech, space orientated) and that also makes it easy to read. Also, it’s pretty hard finding a good place to stick the logo – which is inconveniently round =P Here’s some more changes to the second idea: Feedback? [Less]

I think it was at the end of 2007 that I started to slowly get involved with Ubuntu related artwork after most of my previous efforts had to do with the Linux Audio scene. Considering myself a member by my acts since a while, I only now got around to ... [More] apply for it formally. It was found to be a clear case, making it a nice experience Have a look at my Ubuntu wiki page to see my contributions, or my blog for lots of graphics, some music and not too many words Filed under: Planet Ubuntu, Ubuntu [Less]

Today i tried out the new KDE 4.4.1 SC, ever since KDE 4.0 i have been trying out each new point release. Now, i was pretty impressed with KDE 4.3.5 a while ago but was driven back to gnome because of several desktop annoyances that really bugged the ... [More] hell out of me, such as the messy arrangement of settings in the system settings and the complete lack of an easy to find shutdown button as well as my taskbar doing strange things. However, after trying out the new release of KDE im pleased to say that i really like it, and following are some of the reasons why i may well switch to kubuntu when 10.04 comes around: Desktop Effects The desktop effects in KDE, are sooooo much smoother than compiz is in gnome, sure if i had a much newer computer it would not be so noticable, but for those of us that have old clunky P4’s its annoying to have laggy desktop effects. Although i do have to admit that compiz appears to be a fair bit more customizable still. Desktop and Applications General cruising around the desktop and playing with applications is much more fun in KDE than in GNOME. For one thing i found KDE apps to be more configurable and while not as simple as some GNOME apps, they were still extremely user friendly. After just one day of using KDE i already use kmail instead of evolution and thunderbird, dolphin instead of pcmanfm and quassel instead of xchat. Final Thoughts Im now finding that GNOME’s simplicity, while not a bad thing, is not the right desktop for me, KDE is great, the default apps are more what i want than what GNOME offers and it is lighter on my system than GNOME is by around 15%. Iv now decided to go with Kubuntu when 10.04 comes out. In other News Why not join in the effort to create a beginners manual for ubuntu, if you are a part of the Ubuntu Forums, why not put a link to the Ubuntu Manual website in your sig! [Less]