Opening windows without user action
 

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Several people have made these points over the past couple of days, but
I'll reply only once. :-)

Aigars Mahinovs wrote on 24/02/09 02:55:
>...
> However, the system should _never_ open windows without user action.

That is a nice ideal, and certainly developers should be sparing about
opening windows unasked.

But as an absolute, that rule simply does not work for graphical
operating systems running on real hardware that can experience errors,
and it simply does not work for graphical operating systems that accept
human-relevant connections from a network.

If your hard disk starts to fail, the system needs to display something
that will notify you in time to migrate to a new one. If someone is
trying to call you over IM, the system needs to display something that
lets you answer the call quickly before the person gets bored and hangs
up. If you're on the Internet and there's a software update to fix a
security vulnerability, the system needs to prompt you to install the
update soon so that you don't get attacked. If three months ago you set
a calendar alarm for today, the system needs to display something today
that lets you know it's happened.

Until now, Ubuntu has often used persistent interactive notification
bubbles for these kinds of things. These have been functionally
equivalent to alert boxes, only yellower and floatier. Real alert boxes,
and especially other types of window, can communicate much more
expressively and at lesser risk of accidental clicks.

> Linux is about user being in control.

Any sentence of the form "Linux is about <noun phrase>" is a fallacy.

> Viruses on Windows take away
> control from users by creating new pop-up (and pop-under) windows. Any
> new Ubuntu user coming from virus infected waters will automatically
> associate a window that magically appears on his desktop as a virus,

Sorry, but limiting the Ubuntu interface to whatever malware doesn't
look like -- on a different OS, even! -- is not a tenable design
strategy. You might equally say that any Windows user will automatically
treat anything free as suspicious, or anything coming from Africa as a
scam. That doesn't mean it's wrong for Ubuntu to be free or to have
African origins.

> many veteran Linux user will see that as a violation of user trust in
> the system. The system can poke user via notification or maybe even
> icons in really important cases, but window control is user's domain
> and the system has no business messing with that.

We think the reverse is true. Notification bubbles should not be
overused, but when they are used, they should be for things that do not
need response or acknowledgement. If a program does need response or
acknowledgement, it should use a more substantial window. And except for
a few highly-recognizable icons (envelope for messages, speaker for
volume, battery for power, etc), panel icons are pretty hopeless as a
method of notifying people of things.

Cheers
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Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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Opening windows without user action
 

On Thu, 2009-02-26 at 19:41 +0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
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>
> Several people have made these points over the past couple of days, but
> I'll reply only once. :-)
>
> Aigars Mahinovs wrote on 24/02/09 02:55:
> >...
> > However, the system should _never_ open windows without user action.
>
> That is a nice ideal, and certainly developers should be sparing about
> opening windows unasked.
So why not be sparing about u-m?

> We think the reverse is true. Notification bubbles should not be
> overused, but when they are used, they should be for things that do not
> need response or acknowledgement. If a program does need response or
> acknowledgement, it should use a more substantial window. And except for
> a few highly-recognizable icons (envelope for messages, speaker for
> volume, battery for power, etc), panel icons are pretty hopeless as a
> method of notifying people of things.
I disagree. You are discounting the fact that users will generally learn
to associate certain icons with certain events. For example, Pidgin's
icon isn't exactly the most intuitive, but it can convey my status to me
pretty effectively, just by changing the icon. Also, in the case of
incoming messages, it changes and blinks. To a first time user, this may
not be intuitive, but to one who has used this for some time, it conveys
the message very effectively. Similarly, update-notifier's icon will not
make sense to a first-timer, but after that, it gets indispensable.

There is and will always be a learning curve to everything, especially
learning how to use a new operating system, or even a desktop
environment. While smoothing that learning curve is good, I believe that
what matters more at the end of the day is the day-to-day experience of
using the software. You seem to be inverting this priority -- making
things easy to discover during first-time usage, and not changing this
behaviour for later uses, such that it gets annoying.

Here is a use case where u-m automatically opening up is pointless and
annoying:

Every time I see the update-notifier icon, I open a terminal and run
'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' simply because I prefer the terminal for
upgrades over the GUI. Surely you won't deny me that choice. Note that
since I upgrade via terminal, I never manually open u-m. This means that
after a week, u-m will open on its own. What do I do? I close it. And
then I continue performing my upgrades via terminal. Next week, it
happens again. And again. And again. I cannot understand how this
behaviour can possibly be not irritating. On the other hand, from what I
understand, if I disable this behaviour completely, update-notifier
won't even give me an icon any more. So I'll have to check on my own for
updates. How inconvenient.
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Opening windows without user action
 

Moins,


On Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:24:25 +0800
Chow Loong Jin <hyperair@gmail.com> wrote:

> [...]

> Every time I see the update-notifier icon, I open a terminal and
run
> 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' simply because I prefer the terminal for
> upgrades over the GUI. Surely you won't deny me that choice. Note that
> since I upgrade via terminal, I never manually open u-m. This means
> that after a week, u-m will open on its own. What do I do? I close
> it. And then I continue performing my upgrades via terminal. Next
> week, it happens again. And again. And again. I cannot understand how
> this behaviour can possibly be not irritating. On the other hand,
> from what I understand, if I disable this behaviour completely,
> update-notifier won't even give me an icon any more. So I'll have to
> check on my own for updates. How inconvenient.

TBH, if you rely on the CLI...then you would implement some automatism
to check for updates via cron and sending email to your localhost
account.

As I for myself being a heavy CLI user, I appreciate the
update-notifier icon...I also appreciate some notifications about "Hey,
your battery is only 43% filled" or "Jim XMPPed" (this can be an
annoyance, but this is something you can disable in your app).

There is a difference between a user who only uses UI stuff or someone
who uses mostly the CLI.

For a switching user from windows/mac to gnome/kde those graphical
notifications are good...even for usability. As MPT mentioned, an abuse
of those notifications is dangerous, but sane toasters / OSDs / bubbles
onscreen can be helpful.

For a CLI user (or old time unixdude) mostly all graphical crap is
dangerous...burn it...it's witchcraft...;)

Regards,

sh
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Opening windows without user action
 

Chow Loong Jin [2009-02-27 4:24 +0800]:
> upgrades over the GUI. Surely you won't deny me that choice. Note that
> since I upgrade via terminal, I never manually open u-m. This means that
> after a week, u-m will open on its own.

No, see Matthew's reply. It will not ever open automatically if you
used apt-get, aptitude, or friends in the past 7 days.

Martin
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