Ayatana Design

Discoverability of applications is poor

Bug #755412 reported by Michael Hope
24
This bug affects 4 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Ayatana Design
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
unity (Ubuntu)
Opinion
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

It's very hard to discover what interesting applications are installed when using the applications panel. The default view shows six items alphabetically sorted. On a default install these are 'About Me', 'Additional Drivers', 'Aislerot Solatire', 'Appearance', 'Arista Transcoder', and 'Assistive Technologies'. Four of these are control panels, and one is a game. Clicking on 'Show more' adds an extra row with visible text and another row with the text cut off. I have to click another button to make the grid take up the whole screen, which then shows 54 items in alpha sort. Scrolling in the list is difficult.

I don't know what most of these applications are or do. I don't know which are important or interesting.

Suggestions:
 * Shrink the default spacing to fit more in the default view
 * Sort by popularity?
 * Group by category so that they're easier to scan?
 * Demote control panels to a different panel or group?
 * Add some type of description of the function of each application?
 * Suggest interesting programs at the top of the list?

Tags: needs-design
Revision history for this message
Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar) wrote :

Needs design discussion.

Changed in unity:
status: New → Incomplete
Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)
tags: added: needs-design
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
jasonmartens (me-jasonmartens) wrote :

I would like to second this bug. When I started Unity for the first time, I started looking for the "Photo" application. I used to use F-Spot, but there was a new one I've been using since the last release, and I couldn't remember the name. I started clicking around in the various menus, and there is no way to browse what applications are installed by default. I tried searching applications for "photo" and "pictures", but that didn't find the application either. Finally, I remembered I was looking for shotwell, and searching for that I was able to find it. The two issues I see coming from this are:
1. Browsing is horrible, there is no way to "discover" what applications are installed.
2. Search doesn't work well. Searching for "Pictures", "Photos", or "Photographs" should all have found both f-spot and shotwell in the menu.

That said, I like unity a lot, and look forward to using it more! Keep up the good work.

Revision history for this message
Mohsin Falak (fi8er1) wrote :

jasonmartens,
You can find F-Spot in the Application Search Icon on the Unity Launcher.

Andrea Azzarone (azzar1)
Changed in ayatana-design:
status: New → Invalid
no longer affects: unity
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Opinion
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