[CoLoCo] Shuttleworth: Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu.

[Neal McBurnett]

The new "Head-Up Display" for 12.04 Precise looks great!

Mark Shuttleworth Blog Archive Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu.
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/939

Makes me want to fire up precise on one of my machines....

Has anyone tried it?
1
Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/

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[Ian Santopietro]

It feels faster and more stable than Oneiric right now. I would keep an 11.10 installation as a backup, but trying it on a separate partition is definitely a good idea.

[David Overcash]

I read that they were planning on replacing the traditional menu with that completely at some point - here's hoping they allow us folks who don't like it to keep the legacy options alive.

I still have the same problem with this HUD system as I do Unity in general - it's quite non-user-friendly to some degree.  If you don't know the name of what you're looking for, you're utterly hopeless.  That could be made up - to some degree - with descriptions attached to each menu item, but I don't see every application developer going back and implementing that.

Does that make sense?  If you don't know what you're looking for, it's sometimes easier to just go through the menus and find it.

The same goes for Unity - I have no idea what's installed on my system, but I do know the few applications that I can get to commonly through Unity because I use them so frequently.  If I was a new user and I wanted to simply browse the applications that came with Ubuntu, I'd have to figure out to click the little Application lens at the bottom, and then click the extremely tiny text that says "See all ___" on the second row.

Unity and the HUD will work fantastically for people who are familiar with the applications they use on a daily basis ( and for that I absolutely love it ) - but from a new-person perspective, I still have my doubts.

Ok - end rant.  :)

Cheers,

David

[Nick Post]

I just checked out that site & can't wait to go home & check it out! I will heed Ian's advice though & put it on a separate partition. I'll add my two cents after I play for a bit!

Thanks for the link on this!

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[mk...@numericalgeo.com]

I have to agree with you completely, David.  I have Unity on a few of my machines (Including my main work box), but at home I just can't make the switch on my everyday computer from Gnome 2.  Eventually I'll be forced though :(  I could rant all day about things I HATE about it.

However, my wife has never used anything but Unity (well, Kubuntu, but she hated that), and it took less than a month to make her a complete Linux convert.  (Thanks for you guys' opinions on which to install a while ago.)  If it worked that well for her, SOMETHING must be right!

(I did make the joke that I can't wait for her to compile her own linux kernel, and she didn't get it.  I guess we have a way to go.)

Cheers

Andy

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [CoLoCo] Shuttleworth: Introducing the HUD. Say hello to
the future of the menu.

From: David Overcash <funnylo...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, January 25, 2012 7:08 am
To: Ubuntu Colorado Local Community Team
<ubuntu...@lists.ubuntu.com>

I read that they were planning on replacing the traditional menu with that completely at some point - here's hoping they allow us folks who don't like it to keep the legacy options alive.

I still have the same problem with this HUD system as I do Unity in general - it's quite non-user-friendly to some degree.  If you don't know the name of what you're looking for, you're utterly hopeless.  That could be made up - to some degree - with descriptions attached to each menu item, but I don't see every application developer going back and implementing that.

Does that make sense?  If you don't know what you're looking for, it's sometimes easier to just go through the menus and find it.

The same goes for Unity - I have no idea what's installed on my system, but I do know the few applications that I can get to commonly through Unity because I use them so frequently.  If I was a new user and I wanted to simply browse the applications that came with Ubuntu, I'd have to figure out to click the little Application lens at the bottom, and then click the extremely tiny text that says "See all ___" on the second row.

Unity and the HUD will work fantastically for people who are familiar with the applications they use on a daily basis ( and for that I absolutely love it ) - but from a new-person perspective, I still have my doubts.

Ok - end rant.  :)

Cheers,

David

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 10:49 PM, Ian Santopietro <isa...@gmail.com> wrote:

It feels faster and more stable than Oneiric right now. I would keep an 11.10 installation as a backup, but trying it on a separate partition is definitely a good idea.

On Jan 24, 2012 10:42 PM, "Neal McBurnett" <ne...@bcn.boulder.co.us> wrote:

The new "Head-Up Display" for 12.04 Precise looks great!

Mark Shuttleworth  Blog Archive  Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu.
 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/939

Makes me want to fire up precise on one of my machines....

Has anyone tried it?
1
Neal McBurnett                 http://neal.mcburnett.org/

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[David Overcash]

However, my wife has never used anything but Unity (well, Kubuntu, but she hated that), and it took less than a month to make her a complete Linux convert.  (Thanks for you guys' opinions on which to install a while ago.)  If it worked that well for her, SOMETHING must be right!

That's awesome!  I would much rather have my concerns blown away by user experience... I just suspected that the opposite would be true ( at least for me 10 years ago ).

Cheers,

David

[Neal McBurnett]

At this point HUD is just an additional interface, which seems great for quickly exploring the menu by keyword. You can still use the conventional menu. Of course when they make future changes they'll need to keep an ability to browse thru the whole menu.

But for now HUD seems to go a long way towards resolving the Unity issue I've had, of not working well with focus-follows-mouse. It is a pain to have a small window, and not be able to get to the menu because the focus travels over other windows which grab it under focus-follows-mouse. Now I can just stay on the keyboard to get to the menu.

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/

> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Paul Hummer]

On 1/24/12 10:49 PM, Ian Santopietro wrote:
>
> It feels faster and more stable than Oneiric right now. I would keep
> an 11.10 installation as a backup, but trying it on a separate
> partition is definitely a good idea.
>

Precise has been WORLD'S more stable even in the alpha phases than
Oneiric is in its released form. I would recommend everyone upgrade.
They're putting more thought into stability and quality, so it's rare
that things will break, and if they do, it's only a matter of hours
before its fixed.

I'm running it on my main development machine with all of the odd
corner-case customizations and it's resulted in less downtime than Oneiric.

Cheers,
Paul