new logout dialog interface issues

I agree, this really needs to be fixed.

The quality of this dialog really stood out on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DapperFlight3

One more minor issue I forgot to mention: the sleep and hibernate icons are the exact same thing with different colors. There are many types of color blindness, and I'm not sure if any of them would come into effect with this dialog, but I suspect it's likely. Furthermore, the human mind is more efficient at recognizing shapes than colors, so it would be more useful to have two icons with different shapes but the same colors rather than same colors and different shapes. (Being both different shapes and color is best, of course.)

The power off icon is also a little too similar, in my opinion. The icons also rather don't make sense. Power off isn't using the international sign for power, but sleep is? The reboot icon also looks like the refresh icon in a browser. I don't know if that's intentional or not (I can see the analogy), but it may not be the best icon to use given the differences between refreshing a single web page and rebooting the entire machine.

(I'm the one who designed the dialog and icons.)

This bug-report would be even more useful with concrete suggestions :) What kind of icons do you suggest ? How would you distinguish Sleep from Hibernate ? What would you choose for Restart ? Needless to say, you are welcome to design new icons you find more suitable.

Sorry, I was answering to Sean Middleditch's comment. About the main bug report, we will probably split the dialog in two (logout-related and shutdown-related), indeed.

If I had concise ideas on replacements, I'd have given them straight off. :-) Does KDE use icons for this stuff, and if so, what do their icons look like?

So far as distinguishing sleep and hibernate... I as a user (and a very technically advanced one at that) really have no freakin' clue what the difference is between the two, so it's hard to say. I really don't think there *should* be icons for both, as I said in the original report; most users don't know the difference and both of them should probably be hardware initiated (closing the laptop lid) versus a menu. If I had to go to some menu to put my iBook to sleep I'd never even bother doing it.

What exactly is the use case for having sleep/hibernate in the logout dialog? Is there some class of users that actually needs this? Is it necessary only because some other part of the system (gnome-power-manager, for example) isn't doing its job right?

Looking right now I see there are new dialogs in place after today's apt-get upgrade. Are these your new replacements? I like them. I do have two comments on them:

First, I don't think dialog titles are supposed to be questions, according to the HIG. I can't really think of a good title for either dialog, though... maybe asking for suggestions on the GNOME lists (as these look like good inclusions for being upstreamed) would help.

Second, these dialogs are confirmation alerts. All alert dialogs are supposed to be modal in relation to their application. In the case of session management dialogs, the "application" is the whole desktop. The real problem being that they don't have window titles and don't appear in the window list, but they can under up behind/under other application windows, making them impossible to find without closing/hiding other application windows. I don't know if modal is correct, but at least ensuring that they stay on top of all other windows would be a good improvement.

Thanks for being awesome and working on this stuff, Manu!

I agree that entering sleep mode should happen when you just close the lid of a laptop, and that you don't need a dialog for that. But 1) If your computer is a desktop and you still want to let it sleep (I do this very often with my Powermac when I don't use it), there's no other option than just choose Sleep from the menu (same in OS X). 2) We provide another function, Hibernate, and Mac OS X doesn't have it AFAIK, so we need a way to let people use it. Since Sleep and Hibernate have different effects, and I believe a lot of users will use/need/like both of them, but not in the same situations, I guess they should appear in the menu ? Your laptop should sleep when its lid is closed, but what can you do to let it "Hibernate", apart from using the menu ?

But you're right that the difference between the two is clearly not obvious. And an icon cannot replace a clear explanation. That's why I used tooltips in my previous dialog, as you can see right here :

http://www.manucornet.net/ubuntu/JPEG/Logout_dialog_tooltips.png

(the hibernate tooltips clearly explains that the computer won't be needing or using any power during hibernation). I wrote those sentences, but I'm sure someone else (a native English speaker ^^) will find a better wording. I don't know whether just explaining what it does in the tooltips is enough, but I can't find a better way right now.

About the new dialogs, actually they're not mine, they come from upstream ;-) Vincent Untz is the one to thank for them. In Ubuntu we'll make it slightly different, for now :

* The two menu entries (Shut Down and Log Out) will remain pretty much the same as now, but maybe with icons in the dialog buttons (I'll try and tweak that, soon).

* The applet that will be added in the upper right corner of the screen will bring the "complete" dialog (the one I designed, although there's still some work to do with it), with all 6 options.

Again, this will probably be temporary, so that we can see how people like it and have a little time to see what to do.

Thank you again for your feedback ! These are not obvious problems and we definitely need some brainstorming to get it right :)

Hmm, ok. When you put your desktop to sleep, is it while keeping a session open or only at a login screen? Is this something that could perhaps be made part of the screensaver? (Option: put computer to sleep after X minutes of inactivity.)

So far as hibernate... what does it do? I really have no clue what it does. I'm guessing it's like sleep, but... more so? Is sleep like low-power mode but hibernate is where the computer shuts off entirely but saves its state? Can't we overload the power button on most laptops/desktops to mean "hibernate" or "sleep" instead of "power off"? What about computers that don't even support hibernate or sleep? (Or is that guaranteed to work on every machine, even old ones?)

(I also notice that the new GNOME dialogs use "Suspend" instead of "Sleep" - might be a good idea to make sure you use the same terminology everywhere, between g-p-m, gnome-session, and your new dialog.)

For the main dialog, since you say it'll be back, I guess I don't have much more to say. Some of those more minor tweaks I originally suggested could really make a difference, though.

Why do you use Tango icons instead of stock GNOME icons? I think it only makes sense if Tango would be the new default for Ubuntu.

If you tell me where I can find GNOME stock icons for those 6 actions, I'd love to see what they look like :) I know about the "logout" one, but I'm not sure about the 5 others.

You are right, this is not as easy as it seems. Maybe you can use the reload icon from epiphany for restart, but don't know about the others as well. Why not ask jimmac or tigert to draw some cool icons? But it seems they are overloaded with work, so... :-)

Thanks for this explanation.

A somewhat unrelated problem with the current setup in Dapper is that the System->Shutdown->Suspend option logs the user out, then suspends, which is a very different action than if you use the gnome-panel logout button and select Suspend from that dialog.

I'd consider myself an advanced computer user, and the diverging selection of logout/shutdown/etc dialogs are becoming rather ridiculous and difficult to follow. :-)

Ah ? I never used Suspend from that dialog : if it actually logs the user out first, I guess it is a bug, it definitely shouldn't !

Hello,

The purpose of the logout applet is to expose this action to the user. This is why using a tiny expressive button at the top right corner is very a good idea.

The problem with the system menu is not that it is a menu but that it is not expressive enough.

I sugget to deplace the three entry "Lock screen", "Log out" and "Shutdown" into a tiny popup menu available by clicking the logout applet. This way, user have one way to log off and you can use one true look'n'feel for those dialog.

Note also that two pilosophy of popup dialog coexist : the pure Mac OS X one (system menu) and the pure Windows XP-like with the logout applet.

We should use the Gnomish one popup with few options, icons+text button (horizontal aligned) and a simple question (without a damned stressing count down).

About the nature of the icon. I don't think we should use abstract art. Why not use a more concret representation of sleep (a moon quarter) and hibernate (a bear hibernating) ?

All of i said are advises, not wishes. Feel free to pick idea and improve :)

(I mentioned part of this idea at https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/28939 )

Thanks.

I mentionned the small 3-item menu dropping down from the top-right applet in some previous bug comment or email : I think it is a very good idea.

The idea of a croissant-shaped moon for "Suspend" seems good to me as well ! I'm not sure it would be really explicit though...

This dialog now fades the screen out, but the layout has remained the same.

There is a proposal to include the "lock screen" button in this dialog as well. I think 6 buttons is really enough already, but this could allow us to reorganize the buttons layout. For example :

[Log Out] [Lock Screen] [Swicth User]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Sleep] [Hibernate] [Restart] [Shut Down]

Thoughts ?

My thought is that the dialog is still a bad idea...but the layout does look a little nicer. In particular, it corrects that problem I mentioned in the original report where there were power-management options on the same row as session-management. With your new layout, all the session management is on the top and all the power management is on the bottom.

I do still think you need to keep the HIG button layout in mind, though. The most-used buttons should be on the right, with the most-most used button in the bottom right.

i.e., the layout might be better as:

[Switch User] [Lock Screen] [Log Out]
[Hibernate] [Sleep] [Restart] [Shut Down]

Please also make sure a help button is available. I still have no freakin' clue what the real difference is between sleep and hibernate, or which is which, and I doubt most others users will, either. Lock Screen and Switch User might also need explaining for many users.

Manu, the lock screen could be nice to the dialog. Could you give it a try and attach a mockup?

Now marking as duplicate of bug 33002 (the discussion now goes on there)