You have been subscribed to a public bug:
If you have many (different) devices (device is used substitutional for both:
physical devices and partitions) mounted it can be very inconvenient to see a
bunch of icons all looking the same and don't giving you information about the
mounted device without holding the mouse cursor over the icon.
Especially for keyboard navigation it takes much time to figure out which
device the target device is.
For mouse navigation the current behavior is not as inconvenient as for the
keyboard method, but you still have to check every icon with the cursor after
the wanted device, which takes more time to navigate than seeing the target
device immediately.
So in terms of usability the best option would be if you see the name of the
device somewhere at the depending icon and display more information (for
instance mount point etc.) about the device when the mouse is hovering over the
icon.
If this is unwanted behavior in terms of design, then at least it would be
great if the name of the device would automatically pop up (for example in the
same place it pops up with the mouse cursor) in the keyboard navigation mode
(for instance when the icon is selected
(this idea could also be adopted for the normal apps displayed in the
launcher!)).
But in terms of design I have to add, it is more aesthetic to see the
icon and the depending name of a device instead of only showing an icon,
because this doesn't look very good if you have mounted many external
hard drives with many partitions on them and the launcher displays 10
icons all looking the same.
All these things are only suggestions about the unity launcher, maybe
the design team could think about it, but especially for the keyboard
navigation there has to be done something concerning reaching mounted
media.
Another thing which is worth mentioning about the keyboard mode is the
following: Imagine you have many icons in the launcher. For the first 9 you
have the shortcut, but what about the rest? You have to press Alt-F1 and
navigate icon for icon to reach a special icon. A nice solution would be if the
icons in the launcher would be kind of grouped in groups of 9 giving every icon
in a group a number from 1-9. By default the first group is selected and if you
press super + (a number from 1 to 9) you launch the depending application in
the first group. But if you want to launch a application of another group you
press super + tab for instance and the next group of 9 icons under the first
group is selected. Now you press the number of the application you want to
launch.
So this would be a more effective key navigation mode. The mounted devices
could also be grouped.
All these are only ideas, but I hope at least concerning the mounted devices
there is something done.
I would appreciate if someone would give a statement about these ideas.
** Affects: unity (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
** Tags: bot-comment
--
unity launcher does not display name of mounted mediums without putting the
mouse on the icons
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1030064
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to unity in Ubuntu.
--
Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages
Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net
Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages
More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
