Those pesky buttons

Let’s start by saying the lucid artwork is great work and I’m sure users will love it.

Having buttons on the left side is a nice change and users will probably get used to it without issue, swapping the order of 2 actions on the 3 is a mistake in my opinion though. It breaks muscle memory built over years by our users (and probably those coming from some other os-es). It also breaks consistency with any other themes Ubuntu ships or older Ubuntu versions in a subtle way which will lead people to do errors (the change is too subtle to trigger the user attention about having to think about the action before clicking). Is the change in order really worth the users frustration it will create?

The only thing which is annoying is that Chromium us his own window-decoration and that leads to an inconsistence between normal windows and chromium

I’m using Lucid with the new standard theme since a couple of days. I’m trying hard to get used to the new layout. But to be frank, i can’t. When i’m going to “manage” a window i find myself mousing to the top right corner of a window. I’m so accustomed to that, that I can’t get rid of this habbit.

But not only the position is unfamiliar, it’s the order of the buttons. For years we are used to…

* Ubuntu Karmic: Min, Max, Close
* Windows: Min, Max, Close
* Mac OS X: Close, Min, Max

…and now?

* Ubuntu Lucid: Max, Min, Close

You changed not only the position, you changed the order too! And you choosed a order NO OTHER OS uses. To be frank, it doesn’t feel right. In my eyes it’s a really bad decision. Users will have to get used to the new position and new order. Until yet there’s no easy GUI to take back those changes. Choosing a different theme, doesn’t move the buttons to their “usual” position.

Playing with gconf-keys is not really a thing which i would recommend to someone who is new with Linux.

>> Are we smoking crack to think that the learning curve or getting used to a new position is ever going to be worth any real or perceived benefit of new positions?

That’s what I think. I fail to see what are the benefits in having the button on the left, and then don’t really want to be bothered by this change.

On OSX, you have the button on the left, but the menu bar is on the top of the screen. So, if the window is maximized, and the user want to enter the file menu, the Fitt’s law helps him to not accidentaly click on the close button. That’s not true in the GNOME enviroment. If the windows is not maximized, the distance between the close button the the menu bar also avoids unwanted click on the close button. That’s not true in the GNOME environment.

I think it’s better to have the close button far from the menu bar entries.

Also, be kind and think of all of us that are using daily multiple environments: GNOME on Ubuntu, GNOME on fedora, Windows, KDE. This change will not help us. And even for those that are mainly using OsX and GNOME, the fact the the button order is not the same will not help.

“Personally, I would have the max and min on the left and close on the right.”
I think is a good idea

First of all, you have not argued the _reason_ for changing the position. You did an Obama, you changed. For the sake of change.

Let’s argue what a good reason for a rather radical change could be. Radical yes, since most people have used Windows for about 20 years with minimize/maximize where they’ve always been. If you change, you better have a good reason for it.

To me, a good reason for change, almost the only good reason, is because you have a vision – how you want desktop applications to function in the future. I have such a vision – Google succeeded rather well with Chrome – the vision is to integrate the application bar (chrome) with the menu and have one solid non-client area with [Big enough area for dragging, application name, menu, toolbar(s), min/max/close buttons].
I know this is not gonna happen any time soon in Gnome because of a very old legacy where (key) people believe there is a necessity to separate the application from the window manager. Technically it has to do with the fact that Metacity != GTK, and that GTK should have to care about Window positioning etc. It’s really just a technicality. A tough one yes, but still.
If you ask any random person if they believe the window bar/title (and min/max buttons) belongs to the window or not, they say yes. A Windows developer will definitely say yes. However, a GTK developer will say no. Let’s end this once and for all.

Personally I believe that cluttering the left side of the non-client application area simple because “we” read left-to-right (or bacause Mac OSX is like that) is a bad idea. This will leave a lot of space in the right, used for absolutely nothing.

Please consider thinking of a future where the window manager is integrated with GTK somehow. This _is_ already how modern Mac OSX and Windows versions have done it. If that can be a reality, then the positioning of individual parts of the chrome (menu, min/max buttons etc) will come naturally.

And about the new theme…
The team behind theming has always done a great job. Almost every release of Ubuntu has looked better than the previous, and I’m amazed by how simplicity can look so good. I even rather quickly started to like the colorless icons of 9.10.
However, the theme in Lucid is the worst I have ever seen. It’s dark (which is a radical change), it looks extremely cheap, like it’s made by a 14 year old in an afternoon. There’s a “light” alternative theme (Radiance), yes, which is even uglier although not dark. The metacity theme is even worse, it’s absolutely grotesque.
In light of the great history of Ubuntu theming, I won’t stop hoping this is a joke. Please continue with the light gray, brown/orange shade Human/Clearlooks theme and modernize it, fresh it up just a little bit, perhaps even turn shades to blue or green or yellow or whatever.
Are you trying to make Gnome look like the some dark theme in KDE?

Please tell me you’ve read this:

http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/2010/03/03/the-new-ubuntu-lucid-look-an-appraisal/

Very important points.

I’m an open minded and pragmatic kind of guy. I like to think that the design decisions coming out of Canonical HQ aren’t written on the back of a beermat or pulled out of thin air but taken after careful consideration and forethought for the impact this will have on our current and future user community.

I suspect that in some peoples eyes that will make me a ‘fanboy’, and to some degree that may be true. I have a degree of trust in the Ubuntu developers to do the ‘right’ thing. Maybe that’s misplaced, I don’t know.

Personally I pretty much didn’t care where the buttons are because I didn’t think I used them much. I thought I used the keyboard more than the mouse, using shortcuts like CTRL+Q and ALT+F4 to achieve what those buttons do.

However in the last week or so I’ve noticed on the 3 machines I have running Lucid I have been doing a little dance with my mouse. I throw the mouse up towards the top right and then realising my mistake divert and throw across to the top left. I have to careful to examine the buttons before I click because it doesn’t immediately spring to mind which one is ‘right’. This surprised and alarmed me a bit because I really thought I was a keyboard nerd, but clearly not. My muscle memory is clearly strong. Although given I use Windows all day at work this is hardly surprising.

I’ve kept the buttons in the top left because I’m testing Lucid so it makes sense for me to use it as delivered. In fact I tend to keep the theme and background pretty much as-is for the entire lifecycle. This makes me one of those oddballs who don’t mind brown and for that matter aubergine.

But, I’m just one guy, and I’m not target audience because I’m already ‘converted’. I’d be interested to see what the great unwashed (i.e. not the Ubuntu community) think about this change. The one thing I would ask is that you guys/gals get on top of the bugs filed against these themes. They’re starting to build up.

I’ve been using the buttons on the left since the switch, I have got used to them *but* I still disagree with the change.

Pretty much what everyone else has said is true, the buttons are too close to the menus, the order is wrong, it looks like an OSX rip-off, it breaks muscle memory, it breaks themes, it doesn’t work in the Gnome appearance dialog, it’s happened on an LTS release and it appears to be a change just for the sake of change.

That said the real reason I think this is a bad idea is that although we testers got used to the change pretty quick, we aren’t normal computer users… after the update my girlfriend used the computer. I got called in because she couldn’t figure out how to close the window. She is *not* computer illiterate and has used Ubuntu for some years, but when faced with the missing buttons her first instinct is not to find where they have gone, it’s that the system is broken. Remember also that many (most?) Ubuntu users will be using Windows daily at work, or dual booting, having to continually readjust is a pain.

All of these reasons are of course minor, but I can’t think of a single reason *for* the change that counteracts those reasons. If a button change has to be made (which I don’t really think it does), then at least keep the close button on the right, at least it’s then consistent with Openoffice, Firefox tabs, Chrome etc. and it keeps a destructive action away from the commonly used menus.

Also, if there needs to be another reason against it, the new button position won’t work well with Gnome Shell, imagine how many times you’d accidentally hit the Activities overview!!

Personally, I use the close button the most, so having it at the extreme (far left, or far right) makes sense as it’s easier to get to. It’s definitely the right decision to move the window controls over to the left hand side (where the application menus are), and I’m speaking as someone who doesn’t like the OSX user experience in general.

Ivanka, your post is very much welcome in that it has broken the official silence and will perhaps start a dialogue, but since the new branding was introduced, what lots of people, especially those on the periphery of design and development discourse, rather than the center, have been expecting to hear is a concrete statement of reasoning regarding the current button positioning in the new themes, as opposed to “some correspondence”.

This post, by providing an outline of your thought process in the internal UX&D team meetings, provides the latter, but still not the former. You list the questions you asked, the whiteboard shot outlines the examples you studied; that’s all good, but there’s no trace of the rationale for the actual change. It’s indeed hard to tell if the change is “better or worse”, and for people to present any useful feedback, without knowing what it is that you intended to achieve with it. And this situation brings about all sorts of reactionary accusations of the design being a “ripoff”, being “unoriginal”, being “by Mac users for Mac users”, etc. and causes a lot of negative buzz.

If this is just an experiment (which, given that Lucid is still pre-Beta, is very much expectable) without much of a strong rationale, at least at this point, then we should make that known too, so that the placement is not going to be received as if it were set in stone.

We can really do better at communicating the intentions behind radical changes to users and development branch testers, and I’m willing to help with that.

“Is it better or worse?”

Perhaps neither, maybe it’s about the same.
If it happens to be slightly better to move these around, is it that much better for the potential userbase that it’s worth the pain that some of the current userbase seems to have with the change?

In Thunderbird 3.0, one of the things we got a lot of (negative) feedback on was moving the message actions to the message header instead of the toolbar. I still think it’s worth the pain for the current Thunderbird 2 userbase that updates to version 3, as it allowed us to make only the relevant actions show up on message selection (if you select multiple message, only the two relevant actions show up etc.).

That said, don’t be afraid to shake things around a bit, that’s one of the biggest strengths of both Ubuntu and GNOME.

The position is not that big of a deal, the order is.

Also, agreed with comments saying LTS might not be the best release to test this on. A new theme is a new theme, no more, no less (love them btw), but changing the position and order of the buttons is a big UI change and it has obviously raised questions regarding usability already.

I was a bit skeptical at first, but I think I’ve gotten used to it, and learned quite quickly. I like how it gives some weight to the upper left-hand corner of the screen (the program menu is there as well).
Nice work. 🙂

The benefit of having the window buttons as they have always been out weighs the perceived advantage the new placement could bring to user. Using OSX as a case study doesn’t not take into consideration that gnome and OSX do things quite different when it comes to desktop management. for me the windows manager is a case of if it aint broken, dont fit it. The current state of things create problems of inconsistency on the Ubuntu desktop with some applications (google chrome) having their own window managers. What about other metacity theme? Perhaps the best thing to do is leave the window button as default but create a GUI config tool which would allow users to change their window button placement anyway they want.

@Christoph

I believe that you can right click in the title bar for the always-on-top kind
of functionality.

Huh?..all you have to do is right click the title bar to access these functions..oh and for me, I prefer my buttons to the right and it’s a simple hack to move them 🙂

I cannot begin to tell you how massively misguided this idea is.

First, it reduces your chances for adoption by Windows users who will find it annoying. See Bug #1. Windows users will be hampered switching between desktops using dual boot setups. It’s annoys loyal users that are your marketing base that have to overcome years if not decades of muscle memory. The close for tabs in the GTK toolkit are on the right making the UI paradigm inconsistent. The potential for regression is massive, especially in a LTS release. You’ve most likely broken a number of themes.

For Ubuntu to be successful, it needs to grow. It needs to poach Windows users. This will not further the cause. If you were serious about this, you should have offered a UI choice during installation. One for compatibility with existing installations, another for the “New Coke”. You need to phase in a change this fundamental. Let the market decide. If your setup is superior, people will choose it and it will dominate.

UI design requires you to get outside the bubble and think about the big picture. Maybe it is a superior design. But good ideas done incorrectly are worst than the status quo.

When you login to Ubuntu (or any other distro) with Langauge = Hebrew, the buttons are on the left. This is because Hebrew is written from right to left, and in fact this is how it is in Windows too. I always found it very strange, after all I’m not writing the buttons. When I switch between speaking Hebrew and English I don’t change the placement of furnitures in the room… why should these buttons change? Many Hebrew speakers are used to login to their computer with Langauge = English just to avoid this strange thing (writing in the two languages is fully supported either way, it’s just a matter of the UI language).

Well, now it seems that the default in Ubuntu is going to be buttons on the left. So I can now login with Language = Hebrew and have them on the right, just as I’m used to… Are you confused? I am.

Whatever you do, please leave the close button in one of the corners. Doesn’t matter to me if the other buttons are next to it or on the other side. Somehow it feels more natural if the maximize button is on the outside and the minimize is on the inside, but that doesn’t matter much either.

My personal preference = to-right

More importantly, I don’t feel my personal preferences should be default on anything. To think so would be selfish. But one of the reasons I love ubuntu and OSS so much is because they have usually given me the option to change things to my personal preference regardless of what the default was.

So, put the icons wherever you like. But PLEASE give us an easy to find(not gconf) check box somewhere to change this setting to our liking.

Breaking muscle memory isnt a bad thing. No-one is born with a muscle memory for either positions. Right or left doesnt really matter much.
People will always complain for any change[its just what users are used to for years, breaks muscle memory and yada, yada… ]. IMO,These aernt good reasons against the new position.
People can always relearn and form new muscle memory, *if* the change is planned for a purpose.

Change is always good , *if* there is a good reason to change.

It is great that UX wants to listen to user opinions , but what has not been mentioned here is :
– what problem are we trying to solve ? [if we are not trying to solve anything why break it? are we trying to re-invent the wheel? is this a NIH syndrome?]
The thought process leading to the change has been elaborated, but the problem that has been identified is not mentioned. Was there a problem with the old position?

– Has this been given thought for the future? Gnome3 [gnome-shell with it activities button/hot-corner] seem to have not been considered. What happens when gnome-shell lands? the buttons would end up too close to the activities button and this position would be a recipe for accidental clicks. Would we revert back when shell lands?

Answers to these questions would probably reduce the user frustration and probably what people are really expecting to hear.
Without knowing what the problem was earlier and why this has been changed , one really cant judge the change.
Right now, its like asking Americans or British who have switched locales : “do you like driving on the right or the left side of the road?” 😉

“Personally, I would have the max and min on the left and close on the right.”

I agree with your preference here. The biggest problem, as I see it, is accidentally hitting the close button and interrupting your task. Most buttons and menus tend to be on the left side in a left-to-right environment. So, by putting the close button on the far right side, you have much less of a chance of accidentally hitting the close button when you were really trying to hit the file menu or some other button.

On the other hand, the minimize and maximize/unmaximize buttons are no so terribly disruptive if hit by accident. In addition, by separating them from the close button you further prevent the user from accidentally hiting the close button when trying to hit the maximize button.

I like that this was pondered extensively and I’m sure you folks came up with the best, most scientifically accurate solution 🙂

Firstly, this approach certainly has grown on me. My favourite part is that it gives us a bigger target with which to drag a window. For me — and this is probably subjective (though would be interesting to research) — when I stack windows on each other it’s usually going in a left to right order, so with the previous button position the window buttons would be inaccessible without focussing first. Now, naturally, they’re available at a glance. (The left-aligned title helps there, too, and that is a change I am really happy about, having used the Impression theme for the last six months or so).

However, I do have to point out that there are some definite issues with consistency that hinder the idea. You’ve seen most of them. Another is the session indicator (for logging out) at the top right of the screen. Before, that was synonymous with the window close button. Now, the position feels arbitrary and, to me, less natural. Probably not as easy to learn.
That, and I do find myself wondering why, on the title bar, the first thing I see is the window controls and then I read the title. See Gnome’s HIG, and the convention in the desktop to put the close button for dialogs to the bottom right side.

Alas, this would be a much less polarizing issue if button positions were controlled by Metacity themes, not gconf keys…

I think the community has to evolve some new layout!!

No Buttons Anymore. Move the window to get some actions. Preferred like gestures
to not make aktions while only dragging the window to a position:

My thougths:

Throw the window to bottom: Minimize
Throw the window to upper: Maximize
Throw the window to right: Close
Throw the window to left: “Close” -> Save state like Iphone do

So the buttons are obsolte. Please, try to invent something new instead of rolling the old thing 10 times and it doesn’t even get better.

Few things:

1. Markus Korn is right. Changes like this shouldn’t go into a LTS release.
2. You need to do more work and discuss the menu as a whole not just where do the min, max, close buttons go. Ask questions like, “Where the title text in mac, win, linux? Is it centered? Why is it where it is? Is there an icon next to it?
3. I think the buttons should blend into the title bar and then change color when you hover over them. The circle “look at me I’m a button” needs to go because it fills the desktop with unnecessary “clutter/distraction.” Look at the Google Chrome theme for an example.

This is constructive criticism… you guy have done great work, so I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/light-themes/+bug/532271

Argh. The multiple spaces got removed.


+---+---+---+--------------------------------+---+---+---+
| H | D | V | Window Title ................. | _ | - | x |
+---+---+---+--------------------------------+---+---+---+


I was actually thinking much in line with Eumel when reading the post, but I would stil keep a Close button and still keep it in top right. There is a lot of ‘closure’ in top right – tabs close in the top left of the tab header, windows have the close button there, and even in the default panel layout the logout and shut down actions are in top right corner.

Close needs to be in the top right corner for consistency.

Now other window actions as minimize, maximize and tiling should be redone as mouse gestures and have no buttons by default (throw up = maximize, throw down = minimize, throw left, right = tiling with preference to the new window being right or left to previously tiled windows).

Yeah, closing the window instead of opening the “file” menu for example could be very annoying.

the second comment is very reasonable.

Maybe we should wait for the whole package though (Gnome Global Menu?),
personally I would just merge GGM and the window buttons in one line, sadly that is only doable in the panel, but makes much more sense than putting them above one another..

The last time I ran Gnome, I was very comfortable using this setup: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Nothing+To+It?content=66388

I’m going with “probably not worth changing”… I think people very quickly figure out where min/max/close are and moving them from where they are normally will upset lots of people while nearly no one will find anything works better with the change – it might seem “illogical” to people but that doesn’t stack up against sheer force of habit.

Also visually it means that window titles are awkwardly offset compared to the menu entries… notice that Mac centers the text but the new Ubuntu themes don’t (and max doesn’t have text menus near the title bar anyway).

I have solved many problems myself for other peoples about usability.

Remove buttons of “Minimize” and “Maximize”. You do not need them.
Keep “Close” and add “Keep top” and “On all desktops” buttons.
Place “Close” to left corner and “Keep top” and “On all desktops” to top right corner.

X_____________________K_O

When you want to minimize the window. Click the window task on taskbar. When you want to show it again, you are already clicking it from that same place.
Many old people who are first time starting to use computer, finds that very intuitive. It is already on taskbar, you can manage it from there.

When you want to maximize the window. You drag it to top of the screen (if you have a KWin as windowmanager) or you double click the decoration. When you double click it again, it comes back to normal.

When you want to roll window, you use scrollwheel up/down on it.

When you want to close it, you just go to top left and close it. Usually I dont even place the close button to window decoration at all. Because people close too much windowses what they are using soon. It is better to close them from taskbar. They learn faster the multitasking and you do not spend time to close window because it is on your way.

In the end, you only have two buttons on your window decoration, keep top and all desktops. All desktops is not so needed for normal users because desktop grid is so great to move window. But top of others is thing what people really like to have there. You can pin the window easily. And if user does not need the hiding function of windows, you can activate the scrollwheel to place window top of others or normal.

In few hours, new users have learned to manage windows better ways than long time users use. Just by having only a “keep top” button on window decoration.
And if we add a “Quit” button to toolbar far right on it. We can even remove the last button from window decoration and it becames just what it is, a window decoration and the window manager takes care it for you.

And in the end. We only have intuitive desktop where we drag window to top, right or left side to maximize to other side of screen or fullscreen. Double click to close. Minimize/show from taskpanel and pin top of others with scrollwheel.
And no decoration problem.

And works very great way with touchscreen as well!

@Hezy:
Just run this in a terminal:
gconftool-2 -t str -s /apps/metacity/general/button_layout menu:minimize,maximize,close

It should set the windows button to the right matter what language you use 😉

Window operations are a different kind of operations than functions in the applications menu. They SHOULD be distinct – can you imagine somebody (consciously or unconsciously) confusing the two, and moving the mouse in the wrong direction before doubling back?

As for the positions of the buttons: The usual order seems somehow intuitive – maximize should be ‘outside’ where minimize is. And close is always the ‘last’ operation. Contrarily, having the close button close to maximize, and also close to the top-right drag corner, is dangerous. As always UI design is about compromise.

Two options you didn’t explore but are probably suboptimal:
(i) merging the menu-bar and window-title-bar (ala chrome), which saves vertical space on these insane panoramic displays we’re all using (but is problematic for small windows relative to app menu), or
(ii) moving the window controls to another border (say, the bottom) where the min/max could be separated properly (but you lose pointer precision when you have to move it too far in one ‘hop’.

As another aside, the idea of putting the close button on the opposite side from the min/max buttons in GNOME is nothing new. I certainly remember it being suggested when we were writing the HIG back in 2002 or so, but we decided window manager theming wasn’t an area the HIG should be covering so it never really went any further.

” Why, when we read left to right is the most destructive action first?”

… by this logic could you perhaps also consider changing the order of gtk+ dialogs/buttons from Cancel / OK Cancel / Apply buttons to OK /Cancel Apply / Cancel ?

Why do we need an maximize button if we can do that by double clicking the title bar, just like a big maximize button. Why do we need the close button if we have alt+f4 (ok, thats just a short cut).
I think the idea of getting rid of the title bar is a good idea, and using the task/window list as a window name shower and window management functions (that can already be done my right clicking it).

I would like to put the close on the right and min/max on the left too, but the new Lucid theme get ugly if i did this

I hate the new scheme on the left. Here my reason:
I have to switch frequently between Windows and Linux (Virtualbox with XP is almost constantly running) . at this time, both are very similar, no problem. With the new setup I’d have to change all the times. Suddenly, what was an intuitive mouse movement becomes a thing you’ve got to think before you click. In addition, some applications, like chrome, without title bar, will still have the traditional controls on the right. Total confusion !
I think too that such a change is too sudden, divulged two months before a LTS release.
Markus

I guess I should follow up with RJ Mical’s advice: “Dare to be gorgeous and unique. But don’t ever be cryptic or otherwise unfathomable. Make it unforgettably great.”

Its not that I think one placement decision is better than the other, its just I don’t see any valid usability justification for moving the buttons.

On the other hand I can see several reasons for maintaining their position:
1) Its where they are in the current Ubuntu, people are used to it.
2) Its where they are in Windows, if you want to capture new users, they’re likely going to come from Windows, and they’re going to be facing enough changes without having to worry about where they click to maximize.

This entire debate is laughable. I want to put the buttons wherever I want them, to suit my mood, ergonomics or whatever. Let me decide where to put the buttons, globally or per application, please.

With respect, UI designers need to stop pulling stuff with this Office ’07 mentality. I’m the user; let me decide what I want to see on the front-end.

I think if a UI change like this is going to be dumped on existing and new users that they should at least be given the courtesy of having the ability to EASILY change it back to right-hand via the Preferences>Appearance panel. My understanding is that right now, in order to “fix” this, you have to open a terminal window and type some strange looking command in, or fire up gconf and do… who knows what.

I really think the new theme has potential, but I’d love to see more Aubergine (for example selected items) and the menuebackground should be lighter in the dark Version.

When you guy’s reveal this was just an April fools prank, all us naysayers will have egg all over our faces.

Here’s my thinking: WHY bother all the carefully laid out balance of the lives of all the readers, when you can simply include 2 themes instead of just one?

I figure, if you were to design a nice (and I mean nice) tool to actually build your own layout, then there’d be no need for all this, and you’d be hailed as the people that gave back the desktop to its users.

My opinion about the “Close Window” button placement on the left is simply because western civilisation uses mostly latin alphabet and left-to-right writing. So you generally start something on the left, and finish it on the right. But what about the Chinese?

They actually read from the bottom right to the top left, going down-to-up, not right-to-left. So the habit is truly to have that same button at the top-left for them, which makes a lot more sense.

Hence multiple themes, each adapted to their own cultures, while retaining the same artistic vision. Does that sound more appealing now?

I wish I had the latitude to design a truly international OS where corporate giants and supercorps have totally failed to see the actual potential they hold within reach. Software is so flexible, why hold back?

If I think about what has bothered me about Ubuntu/Gnome usability it’s things such as preferences being a menu (not an organized app), that the clipboard doesn’t retain itself when the app closes, that keyboard shortcuts are inconsistent across applications…

So when the most obvious change that occurs is moving buttons that were working, to somewhere where I’ll likely strike them unintentionally, and then chisel it out and colour it red to make it really distracting… I’m disappointed. It also removes opportunities like Chrome’s very efficient window layout (menus and window controls are secondary to the application, making it much slicker and efficient layout)

I can appreciate trying to improve Ubuntu to make it top notch, but this change doesn’t seem to improve usability nor is it slick (it sticks out like a sore thumb and doesn’t feel refined and polished)

Make it selectable!
I suspect one is splitting hairs when trying to sort out where they “should” go.

Having purchased my first Mac this past December, I am getting used to Mac OS’s placement. I still use win-xp at work.
I would prefer to set my Ubuntu server to match my Mac.
Others will prefer to set it to Win 7, or some other way.

By all means, decide on a rational for Ubuntu and set a default, but let people set it where they want, if so desired.

in any case, you shouldn’t just go changing things for existing users. if you want to give a choice, then give a choice. but fdont make a change thats a pain and then make me have to go through google to find out how to fix. it. and btw, i liked the brown too ..

Over 3,700 Ubuntu users have taken a poll about this very issue (window controls on the left or right): http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/03/poll-do-you-want-ubuntu-window-controls.html.

As of this comment, here are the results:
Left thanks! 21% (785 votes)
Right please! 79% (2,953 votes)

Gnome 3.0 seems to be a good time (really now if it’s not too late already) to start discussing the general look of the titlebar, menus, etc. Really the whole window of apps and develop some sort of new and updated standard. I think Microsoft’s Ribbon and office button is a huge improvement over the conventional File, Edit, View, etc menus. I’m not saying this is the answer, but it’s certainly better than the old way and many other apps are copying it (PaperPort, Nitro, etc). However, even with all the drastic changes they did still put the close, max, min buttons on the right. I like to think that when it comes to taking ideas that linux takes the best ideas from both windows and mac and doesn’t try to out right copy one or the other.

Nope, you aren’t smoking crack, you’ve obviosuly passed that phase and are full on mainlining the black tar with 50 on the hype.

Between putting this change into a LTS instead of waiting for 10.10 and seeing how bad the feedback was and copying a bad UI paradigm from Cupertino this is asking for trouble, if I wanted to use an unusable OS my Macbook Pro would still be running OSX instead of dual booting 7 and Ubuntu.

I guess I’d better go and try Kubuntu now as this isn’t going to work for me.

The only relationship relevant here is between the window control buttons and the vertical scroll bar. Often, the first action after resizing a window is re-positioning its content. Placing the control buttons on the opposite side of the screen seems counterproductive. Additionally, the min/max/close buttons have become much smaller in the new themes, making it more of an effort to aim for them, especially at higher screen definitions.

I’d rather see your efforts concentrated on integrating window decoration themes and application themes into one (create a simple interchange protocol via dbus between GTK and window manager where GTK can transmit content, like icons or menubars to the WM, allowing for dynamic re-postioning of application icons, menu- and toolbars into the window title area). Most toolkits have yet to take advantage of the widescreen aspect ratio of modern displays. Look at all the empty space after the ‘Help’ menu or on both sides of the window title on a 1920×1200 screen and you see what I mean…

I quite having like the buttons on the left, but I don’t like the minimize and close buttons being next to each other and so close together – I keep clicking on the wrong one. It’s not so bad having the maximize icon next to the close button because I don’t use maximize nearly as much as minimize.

And if I move the maximize and minimize buttons around using gconf-editor, the icons no longer go nicely together visually.

Ivanka,

Let me ask you some questions “why the Enter Button is not just beside the ESC key”? Why does the socks must be identical when worn in pair? Why do we stick the stamp on the top right corner of the envelop? You can change all of that and the world won’t go any better. Because these are arbitrary standards and a new standard is not necessarily better.

Please stop asking yourself the “design” questions you were wondering in your post. The reason Mac put their buttons on the left is because Windows have them at the right side. If Windows had put their buttons on the left side, I bet you the Mac people will put theirs on the right side. I am afraid you guys are doing the same. You try to shuffle these buttons just to say I am doing like the big guys but I am not a copycat. Come on, you still use the SAME 3 buttons min/max/close ! Regardless where you put them, you don’t invent anything new.

When people comment about Ubuntu look and feel, they talk about colors, fonts, less buggy graphic driver, or less ugly wallpapers. Never I have seen someone complaining about the buttons position.

Here the best solution: design a better theme customization utility where people can select the buttons position. Get easily all the custom themes available on gnome look. More fined grained possibility to change theme elements, pretty much like Windows Display properties, Advanced Settings.

I use a global menu bar on every platform I touch. On Mac, ..It is what it is. In Ubuntu, it’s gnome-globalmenu, and in Kubuntu, it’s Bespin with the XBar.

I don’t see how anyone hopes to make any real progress without moving to global menu by default, the current squabbling about window control buttons case in point.

Personally I say go global menu and leave the window controls where they are. Most people don’t look at the buttons to tell what they are so much as aim the mouse at the one their habit is to click. Close button belongs in the corner. How I use some buttons in my title bars doesn’t have jack to do with how I read, it’s a matter of habit. You know who I feel sorry for here? The colorblind people. You can make that close button as red as you want to justify moving it to some exotic new location and it doesn’t help them one bit.

I’ve got my grandma on an eMac right now. With HTML5 replacing flash and V/V in Empathy and Pidgin, my unmet requirements list for her migration is getting shorter (Google Earth pending), but there’s no way I’m installing Ubuntu until the global menu thing is solid, I’m not putting her through this.

I find it hilarious that the “interface design” is distilled to “pesky button” positions. It’s all completely academical and looks like an obsession with a detail that is mostly managed by teaching the brain-muscle where to click.

If someone says “Make it like OS X and I will switch” and the reply is “What if we make it better?” and _then_ the result is something butt ugly that competely ignores any whitespace, contrast and even simple typography rules it just shows that someone doesn’t “get it”.

Seriously, button positions!? Half-assed copying of OS X’s window toolbar buttons, menu icons, a completely half assed mix of shiny, glossy, matte elements and icon styles, transluscency for transluscency’s sake, badly anti-aliased UI elements, icons that blend with the backgrounds they’re used on, comepletely random use of whitespace with various UI elements — that’s a good recipe to be worse than Windows, not better than OS X.

And, yes, I know that a lot of the problems are mainly due to the applications themselves. So instead of spending time with philosophical discussion of where windows resize/close/minimize buttons should go, maybe think about some UI guidelines first and force those down people’s throats. Cause I have yet to see someone who can’t learn about windows buttons in a few minutes, but I see plenty of coders who don’t know shit about UI design and are making the Linux “Desktop” a complete mess.

PS: Personally, I would keep max/min/close button all on one side, because it’s easier to remember to “go up+left/up+right” for “window operations” than it is to think about which direction I would go first. And if you have your application’s menus start at the top left, that’s the direction users will go to most often, so puttin the buttons there will put them in a “learned path” of the hand. But that’s just me.

It’s not about esthetics or even usability.

If you don’t put the close button on one of the corners, we will all get RSI / carpet tunnel syndrome.

And this has been pointed out enough already.

If this thing lands like it is, it’s the biggest FU to the community and users in Ubuntu ever.

Put the damn close button on a corner. You are not going to believe the bad press Ubuntu is going to get all of the web, if you guys don’t.

And I strongly suggest you guys do it before the beta. And the icon spacing thing better be fixed as well. Oh well, one more week, before the shit storm starts.

I fully support who suggested the following layout:

[max][min]………..Window title (centered)………..[close]

This is a sort of reversed MacOS9 layout which prevents users from accidentally closing a window instead of maximising or minimising it.

As a fellow usability dude… you’re doing it wrong, Ubuntu Team.

Hi, first of all, thanks for asking the community for feedback.
My 2 cents on this: I always felt like the title bar is wasting precious space. Anything that is going to take space in the ‘vertical’ direction (menu bar, title bar, tabs …) should be carefully considered. On my screen I often see ‘wasted’ space on the sides but I’m often limited vertically.
I guess the MS Office Ribbon is a bad (horrible) implementation of a good idea: make a better use of space which is normally wasted.
In this sense, I welcome the re-positioning of the buttons, but I would encourage you to look at a complete re-design of the title bar. Something more useful and functional than it is today.
I would be willing to go through a learning curve (perhaps a longer one) just to get overall benefits rather than just find the buttons in the new place.
One idea: a “bookmark” button, so that you can set the window in a pre-arranged size/position. Or a ‘color’ button (or maybe a property button, with color being one of them) in case you want to change some default behavior (e.g.: always on top, or always on background).

Lastly: I don’t really mind the position of minimize/restore, but I do find convenient the close button being in the corner (I’m used to it being on the right, but I suppose left would work just as well): why? Because it seems very effective to me to ‘shoot’ the mouse in the corner of the screen to close a window.
This maybe a personal thing, but I normally prefer having windows maximize and flip through them. So to close a program I always find the button in the same spot.

I hope this helps. In any case, thanks for the effort to make Ubuntu better: I do appreciate it greatly.

Keep it as it *was* for LTS, break it and glue it for LTS+1. This is too big change for LTS and it breaks everything LTS stands for.

We read from left to right, it’s natural to place next buttons to the right and back buttons to the left. Close is definitely NOT something you do when you go to the next step. It’s usually something you do to go back to NOT having the application/windows opened.
Looks like a back button to me so it should be top left. Minimize and maximise have a different meaning.. they could be on the right but .. we.. who cares.

– Why, when most application menus are top left should the window controls go top right?

Two possibilities spring to mind:

1. They’re located in the top right because right handed users won’t have to go all the way across the screen to close the buttons.
2. Users are more likely to accidentally close/minimize/maximize the window when the controls are near the application menu.

Just to add that, if following other UI designs, I’d take a look at the Classic Mac OS’ instead: Apple had an actual Human Interface design group those days, and its lack is showing in OS X.

I have no offence against this but it breaks theme it is not compatible with upstream either.

I think you should keep controls as usual.

Just see windows 3.x and win95 (and all linuces I have used) difference in your picture: You’ll understand why, after 15 years, I still sometimes (several times a month) close a window with the intend to minimize it.

That’s not so often I loose productivity with this error, but 15 years after old habits sometimes still come up from the very deep of my brain!

So this is huge change…

This will also break coherency with many applications (the ones using tabs: tab close will stay right… or the ones not using desktop global settings).

Don’t forget that until ubuntu bug #1 stays uncorrected, most ubuntu users go between 2 environments and the other is 90% windows. Who will want to change habits several times a day?

You could reply that Mac users do so… but mac users most often use Mac both at work and at home.

For a LTS version that targets corporate environments, will sysadmins change thousands users habits, loose productivity for an unknown time (remember my 15 years mistakes!)… and hear them screaming?

No, just revert and stop with this test baloon after community feedback: A Lynx is not supposed to look like a Leopard!

@ethana2: One of the problems with a global menubar is that it becomes increasingly painful to use the bigger your screen gets, as you can’t always reach it with a single mouse or touchpad gesture. It was a great idea on the early Macs with their tiny 9-inch screens (which of course means it’s fine on modern netbooks and small laptops too), but these days, using a 30″ screen isn’t uncommon, and it’s pretty horrible to use on those.

It’s also not a great option unless you know your users are never going to use sloppy focus– which is again true on Mac, but not on any X Windows-based system.

@Calum: I don’t think sloppy focus should be taken into consideration, unless it is spcifically part of the concept design. I know that some would hate me just for saying this, but I don’t see how we can ever make considerable progress if we don’t even trust our own designs.

The global menu issue on large monitors is certainly true (and the flicking is not particularly useful when used with a tablet either), but global menu or not, there is definitely a trend towards getting rid of window specific menubars one way or another (with Windows steering away from it, we may soon be the only hold-outs). While the global menu may not be the most efficient in all situations, it does provide a convincing alternative.

I think that gnome-shell is on a good track with the single application-specific menu item in the panel, which could help to find alternatives for window layouts without menu bars. I hope that we will soon have a decision though, whether GNOME 3 goes with this or with the global menubar and panel layout as suggested by Seth.

Some possibly important details about Mac OS and Windows are not on the whiteboard or in the comments.

Early versions of Windows did not have a Close button on the title bar. The [-] button which opens the window frame menu is shown on the whiteboard, but its behavior has not been mentioned. I believe that those versions of Windows, at least some of them, would close the window if you double-clicked that button.

Later versions of Windows replaced that menu button with the application icon, but its function remained the same: click to open the menu, and double-click to close the window. In at least some applications, you can navigate by keyboard between the window frame menu to the application menu bar.

In Mac OS (not sure which versions, maybe all), there are two hidden features in the title bar. The icon is a proxy for the file and you can drag and drop it like you would the file’s icon in the file manager. If you hold Command and click on the icon (or window title?), it will show a menu of folders in the document’s path.

Also, I think Mac OS X carried over the feature from OPENSTEP where the Close button will be disabled if the document is not saved.

If you’re going to put the max/min/close on the left, you’re going to have to put the scroll bar on the left, too.

@David: I haven’t sought out any research, but it’s certainly based on personal experience… I’ve used 24″ and larger monitors with my Macs for years–often in a dual-screen setup, with my laptop screen being the lower screen, which accentuates the problem. The menubar ends up being lightyears away from your mouse pointer, a lot of the time! And there comes a point (not just on Macs) where you just can’t calibrate your mouse or touchpad enough to be able to traverse an area that size with a single sweep, whilst still retaining sufficient control for shorter or more precise movements.

The {needless} button placement change breaks my preferred Metacity theme — AND THE FACT THAT THERE IS NO OBVIOUS WAY TO CHANGE IT is the primary reason I don’t plan to use Lucid. It’s disappointing, because I was looking forward to a new LTS. This will be the first release since Warty that I decided to pass on.

I mostly like the new theme (especially the bright one, the dark option deserves a different name than light), but please reconsider moving buttons around un-necessarily. Many people I know who have shifted to mac say looking for the close button in the “wrong” place is one of the harder things to get used to. For people with less computer experience, moving a button that has always (at least in their minds) been in the same place will just be traumatic.

Try it out in an optional theme for a few years and see if it catches on.

As a general rule, changing anything is a dangerous effort. For the vast majority of people the Right Way of doing things is whatever way they’ve Always Been Doing It. If you’re trying to be user friendly (and we’re Ubuntu so we are), we have to adapt to this way of thinking.

You’re running your graphics on a 40-year-old (distributed) technology (Xwindows), and THIS is the stuff you guys worry about? This is why Linux will never be more than a niche operating system.

Since there are pros and cons to all possible button positioning schemes, it’s difficult to say which one will be superior. Given that themes can easily change this aspect of the UI, it may be worth changing it up this time around in Ubuntu.

However, one more factor to consider is that by placing the window management actions (minimize, maximize, and close) in close proximity to the application actions (the menu bar items), users are more likely to accidentally click on the wrong action.

For example, you might try to click on the “File” menu, but miss, and instead click on the “Close” button, potentially a very frustrating problem indeed. This may seem foolish or unlikely if you are an experienced user. However, if you are using a laptop/netbook with a touchpad, it may be more likely.

By keeping the window management buttons on the right, you are separating two different categories of actions. This makes sense, because these two categories of actions are almost never used in conjunction with each other. In typical workflow, you start an application, then you might maximize/restore the window, and then you use the application (via the menu bar and tool bar). When you are done using the application, you minimize it or close it (via the titlebar).

So there is little to no overlap in the use of application actions and window management actions. Therefore, it makes sense to spatially separate these actions in the UI.

I do not think that major interface changes should be made in an LTS release. Ubuntu 10.04 should focus on stability and that includes stability in the user interface. By not using the button layout of either Windows OR MacOS, the proposed theme creates a steeper barrier of entry for new Ubuntu users. If Lucid is released with this proposed theme as it is now, I am NOT looking forward to explaining to my friends and family who use Ubuntu why the buttons have been shuffled around. Also, the loud purple backgrounds being used by plymouth, gdm and nautilus are FAR from professional. I’d take the brown/black combo over orange/purple any day.

LTS is no place to start pissing about with daft layout ideas or colors. If you must try this out put something in the repository and see how many users take it up. I bet very few.
Lots of people switch from one OS to another several times a day. And sometimes even run both on the same screen. So to operate this window we find the buttons here and there, and this other, with the purple and orange bad style, we find the buttons somewhere else.
This present color and layout is just painting a target on your back.
Come on team. You have the chance here to put the gloss on a great OS.

“- Why, when most application menus are top left should the window controls go top right”

Following the same logic why not have just one panel in Gnome with all the menus, window lists, notification areas, indicator applets, date/time, log out/quit buttons all on the left?
It would be pretty crowded, would look chaotic, and throw Fitt’s law into the mix, you’ve got a pretty hard to use UI.

The application menus are used mainly to work with the data within the window(create, modify or save data, move stuff place to place, change how the data is viewed and so on). The window controls are used for something different- to temporarily move the window out of my way so I can get to something else(minimize), or to close the window once I’m done working with the data.

When I want to create/modify/view content I throw the mouse to the left(reading from left to right, to the beginning)
When I’m done with the data/content, I move the mouse to the right, to the opposite end, to close the window/app.

And as for modifying the order of the Min, Max buttons, it’s more of a complaint because it breaks ‘muscle memory’, but it’s still bugging me, feels like someone switched the accelerator and brake pedals on my car.

Just my $0.02 worth

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/23990/

as mentioned in some posts above, theses “Mac like” buttons with colours demerit the new themes Radiance and Ambiance

We are facing a profound “Mac complex” here, but it’s not too late. The button should be colourless at last, and redesigned at best.

Ubuntu 10.04 the OSX clown (clone)?

I am left thinking ‘deckchairs,titanic’.

Windows 7 suffers too from this obsession with minutiae

If the only problems left to be tackled are the colour and placement of knobs and buttons, then innovation is over. What is the point of any further new versions, ever? The product is finished, fully optimised. Like a 1950s bicycle.

where is the real development? This whole WIMP interface has led us up a 25 year blind alley, wasting millions of hours of peoples lives fiddling about with desktop colours instead of doing any work!

Why can’t we think at our computers? Kirk had a talking computer in 1968. Where is mine? What happened to expert systems? ideas processing? CASE? natural language processing? Why is CAD still so mind-numbingly dull? Databases so tedious?

Where are the open-source drm systems, ebook readers, photo editors (other than GIMP), accesible systems for the handicapped or elderly? By now, surely Stephen Hawking’s talking box should be freely available for anyone who needs it. (and let it not be forgotten that screenreaders for the blind do not mix well with the WIMP desktop)

Do stop pretending that tiddling about with window borders is going to change the world.

Hi Ivanka.

I just wanted to say, that I switched from windows XP to Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 after trying it a little. It seemed like a very tight distribution, made by experienced computer users. However also scaling very well, to the new users. Most things seem to be set up, in a no-nonsense, no-obscurity, way. I particulary turned on to the NewWave theme, and see it as perfect for my needs.

I looked at the theme-updates, said to come in the next version of the Ubuntu-distribution, and well, things seem to be obscured a bit, however it’s nice to see that some of the new themes seems to be further developments on the NewWave theme. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand

I do not think moving the min,max,close buttons to the left, is a wise idea. They can be mixed up with the filemenu, and I don’t think most other OS’s are wrong, in putting them on the right side. BeOS used tabs ofcourse, and had them mostly on the left side, but I don’t think it’s tabbed look, works outside special applications either.

The logo also seems to be influenced by spirits, that are not Ubuntu, or “linux for humans” but rather maybe something I would call “African-tribe-word”-mentality. Remember that Ubuntu most probably has a monotheistic religious origin, and therefore is universal to the whole world. Therefore notions such as african, and tribe, and particulary spears, and so forth, should be dropped, and instead, a good and compassionate, natural “surrendered-to-God”, gnostic mindset instead thought of.

I wrote this earlier about Ubuntu: “It may be an interesting monotheistic thought, behind the name and expression Ubuntu.
It means “I am that I am, because of what We all are”.
Many recognize the monotheistic God, as the cause of all things. An individual cannot say that what he has achieved, not has been based on what others has achieved, of what his parents did, and what his forefathers back to Adam did.
Therefore this expression is a referance to the immanent God, We. The gathering of transcendent intellects. The logos, word, in us all.
Under this is also, that, God exalts, and deludes whomever he wills.”

You can also read more, about my religious research here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Quranical-Islam/223298917285

I saw your blog-title, and it was indeed and interesting title.

I also noticed that the gnome-layout was changed in the earlier screenshots. It is true that a lot of users may not be used to both a lower and an upper bar, but it really is optimal, for an advanced user. I also think that the speaker icon in 9.10 is more suitable than the windows-looking icon, in the screenshot.

Here is a screenshot of my current desktop. I think this is optimal for my needs. Notice that I also added some resource-overviews there. Any changes from this, I do believe is a step in the wrong direction 🙂 http://www.paradoxuncreated.com/Pxu/Screen26feb2010.png

Peace Be With You.

Change for the sake of change, No benefit to the user what so ever! The buttons are fine where they are.

When people asked for the brown to go, they meant the brown, not lets mix this up as much as possible. It’s ended up like that car Homer J Simpson designed.

It would be interesting if there was a study on where on the screen mouse is most of the time.

It seems like someone could write an app to record the position every minute and then make a graphic based on the results. Hot areas where the mouse was a lot and cold where it was only once in a while.

I’m tired of this arbitrary shit – am gonna go play with a green chameleon

I think willy nilly moving the close button without any provable benefit, but very provable setbacks, is a bad bad idea.Actually makes me doubt the sanity of the Ubuntu team and looking at other distros 🙁

I agree with Wyrfel

“Exactly because! Having the window buttons on the right keeps them out of the main focus line. Which is exactly what you want. When i start an application, the first thing i want to be made to decide about – even on the most subtle level – is definately not if i want to close, minimize or maximize its window right away.”

When I open a new program the least thing i want is to get rid if it right away, that’s why the “buttons” should be away from mi sight.
The are a lot of important things in the top left that i’m gonna be right after opening a program.

Also, I agree this is the real deal:
“If you want to do something real useful, i’d rather recommend getting rid of the window menu button (usually the application icon) and coming up with a creative way to amalgamate the menu bar and window border, a bit like Google did with Chrome (only their solution does only half of what it could do).”

In GNOME Shell (GNOME 3) the application menu is in the top panel left to the “Activities Menu” an on top of the title bar. So if we have the application name and the “Application Menu” occupying the (otherwise useless) empty space in the top panel, why should we waste more space whit a title bar of redundant information?

Thanks for opening the floor for this discussion, thats why I love Sofware Libre

PD: I really hate Global Menus

“- Why, when most application menus are top left should the window controls go top right?”

Because accidental clicks happen all the time. Before, accidental clicks around the menu bar meant you were just clicking dead space. Now, you may minimize, maximize or (bring in the agony) close the application altogether.

Change for change’s sake is not good. You are just breaking consistency for no good reason and forcing people to relearn something that has become second nature. We all know that the QWERTY keyboard layout was designed to slow down typing, but it is still the most widely used layout. Why? Are you going to change that too?

@Dan: If you don’t mind doing such analysis in a virtual machine on a Mac or PC, it’s easy enough to do this already. E.g. http://flowingdata.com/2010/02/09/track-mouse-activity-on-your-computer

This is all very well if you expect your users to just use Ubuntu but if like myself and a lot of my clients
you use more than one OS in a day (win @ work, lin @ home) this just makes using Ubuntu frustrating.

I like the suggestion of this been customizable. With the default the least surprising.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

pb…

My .02 cents, since all are chiming in. I do not believe that this is a positive change for my usage, but I can see why some people might prefer it.
When the full release comes, if this element is included, I will decide whether this issue (along with any others) is fixable, endurable, or if I should check out a KDE distro again. Here is my usage pattern.

My mouse never sits up in the top left, waiting to be used. My house parks on the unused real estate on the right edge of the screen. I read left to right, default en_us. Left-justified text means I complete my reading and my eyes (and often mouse) are vertically bottom right and horizontally mid right side of the screen. This means it’s a natural operation to mouse up along the far right edge and close/minimize the windows as needed. I only close or minimize at the end of my usage – not the start. The first thing I do when opening a window is not at the top left, but at the top right.

I may be unusual, since UI guidelines claim you should work from left to right, most commonly used to least commonly used options. I think this fails in many actual usage situations because you close or minimize a window when done with the window, or moving to another window to complete another task before returning.

Strangely, my most used operations all cluster to keyboard shortcuts, followed by bottom right. This is especially true at work, where I run a batch file on Win XP Pro to start and arrange everything on my screen. This makes me a outlying example, but an edge case should be heard as well.

All my other normal operations, especially spending the better part of my day with multiple web-browsers open on multiple screens, are keyboard shortcuts. Except minimize and maximize. For some reason, I simply don’t learn the shortcuts for them. I alt-tab, shift-alt-tab, and use ctrl-n/ctrl-w in Firefox for my open/close operations. I swap between minimize/maximize from bottom by right/left click, or using the top right buttons. Since I have a laptop, I typically have EVERYTHING maximized unless I dual monitor and watch a movie while browsing.

I think the only real answer comes from finding out where a large sample of users hover their mouse, where their pointer spends the most time, and making determinations from that information as to where the best close/minimize/maximize placement is. Not directly in the mouse path, but an easy transverse. For left-to-right languages, natural read or scan patterns move top-left to bottom right as a general rule. I think that should be kept in mind.

The best thing about Linux and Ubuntu is that we have choices, please make it easy to move the icons.

Seems to me if you come from Mac you like the new design if you come from windows you like the old design. Its what people are used to that they like better.

Left side is perfect for us left-handers. Why not make it customisable: left or right?

You asked so I’ll tell you.

Don’t do it. You’re creating problems. We already have enough trouble getting employees to adopt Ubuntu as it is. Most people will not like this. They do not think like you or I.

In a nutshell; if its not broken then don’t fix it. That’s simple common sense.

Haha, smocking crack.

Forget messing with the colours and button positions.

Change as LITTLE look and feel..

Just make go faster, reliable, less ram. (no “forgetting” samba share mounts or WiFi passwords or IP addresses).

Good lord, why purple?!?! Next iteration, how about Olive Drab Green?

This seems like a very bad move. You would need strong reasons to change such a fundamental thing, and you give none. Try concentrating on changing stuff that need to be changed, instead of standardized behaviour known to the most naive user.

The truth that move the buttons and changing colors is a breakthrough, with any issue you customize the appearance and with ‘Ubuntu Tweak’ can change the place of buttons.

A very interesting change would be to reposition the window by dragging the title bar (as Windows Seven) but not only to maximize, left and right, the good would be to put in a position grid.

Let me explain with an example: We have a maximized window, click on the title bar with the right mouse button and start dragging an overlay appears with a square with 2 columns and a square with 4 pictures (for example), so if drag in any portion would be placed at that location of the window.

I put a link to an image that explain it better. Sorry to image texts are in Spanish because it was used in a Spanish blog:

Image

wow, i cant beleive another redesign of something thats not broken.
considering 90% of pcs are on windows, for ease of transistion, just keep it like windows. if anything, put some space between the buttons.
If you want to do something radical, and more useful, merge the menu bar into the title bar. eg

file edit veiw tools help (Title) min max close

Just my thoughts thanks,

Put them back, please.

total epic fail!
not only does it break with consistancy, which is tabu!, its a terrible design anyway.
– easy to hit closebutton when going for menus

– resizebuttons should be close to vertical scroll, as scroll is often next mouse-stop after resize..

– there is a psychological effect when manipulating the window in the top-left corner, which is why we dont have the scroll-field on the left side.. in our mind we feel we “hold our hand over the document we are reading”(right-handed ppl) even the menus should ideally be placed centre for this reason..

this all smells like “mac-envy” anyways.. something i find utterly pathetic.
id personally rather have a sys looking like win95 than a poor osx-clone/wannabe
even the purple color resembles osx..
google: (or bing in your case) “mac osx wallpaper”

I gave it much thought and couldn’t think of a single reason how this change is going to be useful for end-users. I am used to have close button on top right corner of the screen and could aim at it blind folded ( i am sure others can do this too) at times when I don’t wish to use keyboard shortcuts Are you suggesting that I should get used to new locations of buttons that will take anywhere between 2 weeks and 1 month of learning curve and then when I boot windows for work at office place, actively remind myself that the button locations are different? Can you imagine how frustrating this can be?

The point is that nobody complains about the button positions, why would you spend precious time discussing on the design and then face criticisms from users because this change seems total illogical.. after all its the end users who are going to use Ubuntu and not the designers.

I have no problem with the buttons on the left–I get it you want it to look distinctively ‘ubuntu’–I actually find it strangely refreshing but, too me, it looks terribly unbalanced with the buttons on the left AND the window title. I agree with Martin, I think it would look much more balanced with the window title in the centre al la (of what I’ve seen of it) gnome 3.0.

I just tried the new button positioning for quite some time and just couldn’t get used to it! Maybe given enough time I eventually would, but don’t see the advantage in it.

I think a good middle point, that both gives a good usability and gives Ubuntu a distinctive look is to have, as Ivanka says in the post, the maximize/minimize buttons on the left and the close button on the right. It would be even better to have a good preferences dialog so that a user could easily choose the positions as he may wish.

However, I think it is not a very good idea to drop this usability *bomb* in an LTS release. Perhaps 10.10 would be a better target for such a change.

Just my 2cents… 😉

NO! Fine if it has it’s advantages, I will get used to it, but for most “switchers”, from MS Windows that is, it is hell.

If it is really such a wanted improvement, give it as an option during installation of the Ubuntu OS. As others have said IMHO it better to have a good preferences dialog so that a user could easily choose the positions as they may wish.

Thus, I only can repeat what other have said. I think it is NOT a very good idea to drop this usability *bomb* in an LTS release.

If the buttons stay on the left I’m moving to fedora.

-please put them back on the right or place a setting for it in the appearance control panel?
-i don’t see having the buttons on the left as a reading function.
-what about languages that read right to left?
-we have to unlearn what has been the norm for, well to me for 16 years.
-if you must do this, please wait until 10.10 and see how it goes. this is an LTS.

Well, it is very simple to test this, just issue these commands in the console:

Ubuntu’s
gconftool-2 -t string –set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout “maximize,minimize,close:menu”

Ivanka’s
gconftool-2 -t string –set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout “maximize,minimize:close,menu”

Windows
gconftool-2 -t string –set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout “menu:minimize,maximize,close”

MacOSX
gconftool-2 -t string –set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout “close,minimize,maximize:menu”

Which one is better looks hard to tell, but someone at /. said moving the close button away from the corner would prevent people from closing accidentally when they wanted to resize. The rest is a matter of habit i guess.

For those saying this shouldn’t be a high priority, you should realize that the design team is only chartered to evolve the design. It would help if they would point that out more often. I think I understand there is some future reason for this, If I knew I might be more supportive.

I’ve tried themes where the buttons were on the left and hated it. Every time I wanted to close a window I would go to the upper right and then get frustrated.

If this is the default theme, I’ll give it a chance and change to another, or modify it to put the buttons in the right place. If it isn’t modifiable, I’ll change distros.

Still, it would be nice to see some mock-ups that show why this is being discussed because to most of us it seems like a clueless change.

Relax people, just do: gconftool-2 –set “/apps/metacity/general/button_layout” –type string “:maximize,minimize,close”

And they are back on the right. Geez you people are acting like it’s the end of the world. Grow up.

What I found worse than changing the position of the window controls, was that the controls are now so very small. I find the tiny dark x inside the orange ball with the light effect hard very hard to see. In something so small I think there is too much detail.

The issue that confused me the most was that I couldn’t switch back to the old theme as it was. It was there in the theme window, but switching themes apparently does not affect the format of the titlebar.

Lijepo je za vidjeti da ima Hrvata u Ubuntu timu. Lijep pozdrav iz Vukovara. Bila dugmad lijevo ili desno tako mi svejedno.

The problem is the assumption of the design team that everybody will love those buttons once they get used to them.

Because they are not going to get used to them.

What will happen is what is reflected on the polls, over 80% of the users will change them ASAP, and then add the users who don’t participate in polls who are going to run into the forums asking how to fix them as soon as they install.

In the end your little UI experiment will fail because there is no way to enforce it.

The only thing you are going to achieve is eroding the faith of the community.

If you are really that are super great and that everybody will love the change once they get used to it then you better make it impossible to change, remove the option from gconf and use DRM to prevent users from using a third party repos to change their Gnome version because otherwise we are going to opt-out of this scheme.

The wise thing would be to invite users to test this configuration, maybe with a popup dialog and only after a day of regular use.

Make the user feel like they have an option to try something new, instead of making them feel like they have the option of switching distro.

NO! Don’t do this I have the ability to make the buttons switch back/ get used to it, but this is one more person to scare and confuse a new user. There is no benifit and everyone coming from windows will be like WTF. There is no benifit. Why are you making decisions that are so against what the community wants. This just creates problems

Maybe Linux Mint will become more popular than Ubuntu if they keep the original button position as in <= 9.10.

And here I thought it was because Microsoft fired the UI guy behind the Eurozone ballot screen – and Canonical hired him.

But you do have to consider the possibilities of misfiring. Maybe the user does not want to close the window. Maybe an epileptic user accidentally twitches then clicks (and lets me restore the files that just got trashed).

With the drop-down menu already giving you zoom-zoom-close options, what is gained here…although the doubleclick-to-close is not present now at top left – see above, this prevents accidents.

And it’s easier to alt-space zooming anyway. Much easier. Mouse menus are meant for novice learners and those who cannot remember shortcuts; in either case safety over efficiency when data loss might result.

There are some more important issues with screen space. This widescreen is becoming a regrettable standard. Programmers work vertically. Office use is vertical. Only this stupid cinema ratio is widescreen. Uh, just because the new market is videos, it doesn’t mean the old market’s screens should be abandoned. But since it has been…

All of these 1366×768 or 1440×900 screens being sold now get really condensed vertically. Efforts need to be made to reduce/remove the series of horizontal top and bottom rows that can leave us (for instance with file pickers) with scarcely one line of text – but a long line.

I put the widget bar at the side but other adjustments result in weirdness.

Adding a second screen shows issues for tissues too – windows tend to open where the mouse is, not where the opening process is, the window manager likes rectangles so the space above the smaller screen is there in its imagination, and while it may not be the window manager’s fault specifying the default main screen didn’t work until it did – and it’s still telling me the wrong thing while doing what I want.

What the hell is your problem?! I see Ubuntu (as all free Software) as an offer, a kind offer of the developers and distributors for me to use. They do not charge me anything and they most certainly owe me anything! Its their decision, which approach they take and I can test it and then have my choice.

If I don’t like their approach, I can change it, get used to it or simply change the Desktop Environment or the distribution. These are the options, they’re all okay by me. Thats the beauty with free software, I like it.

Btw: Ubuntu has _never_ been democratic nor pretended to be. There’s Debian for that (try if they care for your opinion more..).

Didn’t want to offend anyone, but this “customer-attitude” really makes me sick..

No one has offered a reason for this change except for something in the future.What is this going to be? please tell us. Yes there are ways to work around this now. I still think there should be an option.This still goes much deeper than just this one issue.There is a linux distro out there that uses the same kernal and the same gnome version. They have left all the utilities in it so you can still make adjustments to it,and its very stable.If we knew what was coming I for one would be more in favor of making the adjustment.

Ben Tinc said: ”

What the hell is your problem?! I see Ubuntu (as all free Software) as an offer, a kind offer of the developers and distributors for me to use. They do not charge me anything and they most certainly owe me anything! Its their decision, which approach they take and I can test it and then have my choice.

If I don’t like their approach, I can change it, get used to it or simply change the Desktop Environment or the distribution. These are the options, they’re all okay by me. Thats the beauty with free software, I like it.

Btw: Ubuntu has _never_ been democratic nor pretended to be. There’s Debian for that (try if they care for your opinion more..).

Didn’t want to offend anyone, but this “customer-attitude” really makes me sick..”

I agree with this. All you prima donnas need to get a life. All of you complainers are really giving computer enthusiasts a bad name. Go ahead and get cancer, have 5 months to live, then talk about button placement. It would seem silly at that point, right? Well, it is silly. My god, have you people nothing better to do than come on here with a sanctimonious attitude, begging for attention? STFU, and get real. This isn’t life or death, it’s freakin buttons.

@wolfen69
Btw: Ubuntu has _never_ been democratic nor pretended to be. There’s Debian for that (try if they care for your opinion more..).

Ubuntu without support from the community, will be nothing!
Ubuntu is so popular and improving so much is bcoz of the community.
Hence, input from the community is very important.
If you like to use an OS that the community have no rights to give their opinion, then u should go back and use Windows.

Even M$ is now listening to their users by having beta and listening to the suggestions!

If you want to do what’s logically best, without regard for how unexpected it is, then surely the right thing to do is to put the destructive action (close) as far away as possible from the non-destructive actions (resize). i.e. put close top right, and resize and everything else top left, or vice versa.

I agree with Ivanka’s opinion that the minimise & maximise on the left, close on the right is the nicest.

This is madness. It’s change for the sake of change. There is *no* good reason to break people’s expectations in this way.

This is precisely why Ubuntu continues to suck after all these years. Nobody cares about core functionality. Imagine if this generation had invented Unix! Unix would have been a big, bloated MSDOS.

It is often pointed out (mostly by staff and staff wannabes) that this isn’t a reason to stop using Ubuntu.

Agreed.

But , hey! aren’t there other nice alternatives like for instance Linux Mint? Before, brand loyalty retained me in Ubuntu from even trying other stuff. I was happy and satisfied and new that whatever problems arise I could fix and keep using “my” ubuntu.

Now, I feel suddenly liberated, actually.

Why, when we read left to right is the most destructive action first?

Well, it’s not if you leave it the way windows has it — top right, minimize-maximize-close.

Sounds like canonical is getting a case of mac-envy/apple-fanboi-ism

In the whole post I cannot find any logical explanation.
Just because we read from left to right… – well, then you should put everything to the left, the desktops, the trashcan, user presence or even all tray notification icons and everything. There shouldn’t be either a remaining right side – everything should be left – perfectly as I am left-handed. 😉 – No, joke apart, I want the old style back!

Yes, menus are on the left – but closing a windows is the opposite operation to choosing a new app from the menu – so another reason why it fits well to the right.

Did you want to reduce necessary mouse miles or what? Who really wants to reduce mouse miles driven, uses hotkeys, otherwise a good separation of operations is quite good.

And something else: If you want to get people migrated from Windows you should focus on other things when trying to be better and not on habits that all Windows users do have learned. I have a hard living convince people trying Linux. Decisions like this make it really hard for the typical Windows user that fears the change.

And please: Don’t look at MacOS – just because “owned” by designers this does not mean any real gain on productivity, their focus is to look cool. I for myself want to get my stuff done.

Really, I feel (and I gave the new positions a week to get used to them) that they hamper productivity.

The whole point of putting them on the right, to me, has been to seperate them from the File and edit menus. If I want to quit from the left side of the screen, I can already do that from the file menu, or the window position menu (window->close). Both of these actions were almost impossible to do accidentally. On the right, safely separated from common operations, was the close button, and, less importantly, minimize and maximize.

Now, (or at least, half-an-hour ago, as I finally found out how to fix this with gconf-editor) I hesitate when going to the menus, since I don’t want to hit close my accident, or, still-disruptive but not nearly as bad, minimize.

Please, please, please do not make this the default for 10.04 final.
I tech-support for several people who are not very computer-savvy who I talked into switching to Ubuntu, and this will be a usability nightmare for them. They have enough trouble with the idea that “the start menu is on the top.”

Once again, Canonical folks seem to act like they live in a vacuum and break Linux conventions. Later, you will pester upstream (Gnome) developpers to use the “waisted” top right corner for something else. Other linux users will have to submit to your ways, or projects will in effect be forked. This lack of respect for the Linux ecosystem that supports Ubuntu is really annoying.

@KeithPeter “What I’d like to know is how many people discussed this decision for how long?”

Complains are useless, not because they are invalid but because they are falling on deaf ears.

My only worry is that whatever is gong to be put there is going to be something nasty. If it was something good, you’d hear about it right now, rather, it is being kept in secret. Moving the buttons now would then be an attempt to “soften” the impact. It makes sense, which is scary.

I am not sure if there is any more than the sketch shown in this post. For the Windows 3.x for instance the close button was needed to be double-clicked to make it close.

It is not the problem that we can’t change it – we can, but:
a) the default dummy user will maybe not figure out and
b) for the experienced user it is just annoying and
c) at the same time doing such changes Canonical wants to reduce either configurability to avoid frightening the user and
d) I would say that at least 90 % of new users come from Windows and maybe need to use both during a (maybe longer) transition phase – especially annoying different position of the buttons in this case and
e) that Microsoft evolved to current button position and then kept since 95 maybe do to the fact that the optimum is reached (don’t give much on MacOS here because their priority is to be cool and different, while my priority is productivity, efficiency and reduced annoyancy).

But the real bad thing with the current situation is: Neither Mark nor Ivanka is responding any more to the community (Mark unsubscribed from the bug – so most likely he is not following any more) – I think I have watched and listened to all their comments and my resumee is that there is no real good argument for that change. IMHO they simply mad a mistake but now they don’t admit.

For years users have been trained to do a fundamental task in a particular way, so much so that it has become a completely subconscious reflex action, and now you are breaking that reflex for no good reason resulting pain and anger because you have *substantially reduced the efficiency of all of those users*.

My mother and father, who have quite a problem keeping track of obscure concepts as windows, applications, files and folders will suddenly get some of the few concepts they learnt (how to close a window for instance) removed for them and they’ll have to relearn it.

That’s just not user friendliness.

All of the reasons for this change seems whimsical at best.

The picture doesn’t answer most of the questions at all. I’ll give you some possible answers for some of them.

– Why, when most application menus are top left should the window controls go top right?

Well, there could be a lot of reasons for it. I’ll give some suggestions: You cram to much functionality into too little space, you can utilize that it’s easy to find the corners of the screen with a mouse. Of cource the main reason is: That’s how the last version of Ubuntu worked, it’s _consistent_.

– Why, when we read left to right is the most destructive action first?

It isn’t, now is it? The close window goes to the farthest right… Also I think that suggesting that’s very important is to read to much into it.

– Are we smoking crack to think that the learning curve for getting used to a new position is ever going to be worth any real or perceived benefit of new positions?

Yes. Sorry. I’ve understand that you’re experimenting with putting other stuff there. Fine! When that functionality is available, please do whatever you want, if the new functionality is good and we like it, the relearning might be worth it. But as it stands, you’re making people relearn the way their computer works twice. Once now and once again when that new functionality gets there.

Why, o why did you sacrifice the sound principle of consistency for no apparant benefit?

The moving of the button positions was a bad move. I don’t think you guys really thought this one through and it was just a move to be “more like a mac.”

I’m a UI and UXE designer, so user experience is my forte. I also use a mac for 99% of my computing both professional and personal, so I really like macs and the platform.

Anyways, the problem with moving the buttons to the left is the fact that your menu items are also to the left and under neath it. I know you cite the menus as the reason for moving the buttons over, that is precisely why that is a bad idea in terms of usability.

The menus on the mac are not contained in the windows, but on the OS’s menu bar. This makes it so that the app windows are separate from the App itself. YOu can close a window without exiting an app.

Apps in Ubuntu follows a more MS Windows method in that the windows themselves are the apps and closing the window is what exits you out of the app. Having the buttons over the menu items makes it more prone to accidents, increases app bar height (which affects design) , and you basically just alienated a bunch of users who may have just not gotten used to how to minimize a window vs closing an app the old way.

I think the ubuntu windows looks very good, i will go with it.

I agree with Brad and Stephen Thomas and anyone else that think this is madness and jchange for the sake of change. Is so silly and done with youthfull (or maby old neardness) sake with no clue about the rest of the word. I love my ubuntu and sure, having the buttons to the left is theoreticaly a good idea but it sucks in real life.

Here is my hotfix:
Add repository -> ppa:bisigi/ppa
There are a few cool themes there – I prefer the balanzan
http://www.bisigi-project.org/?page_id=8&lang=en

@Walter: To make it short: For me at least mouse kilometers increased a lot.
Apart from that I often need to support Windows PCs so it is annoying that such frequently used features have not the same style in both OS.

I think the wisest move will be to have the Preferences-Appearance dialog offer a simple way of changing the default button position. Ubuntu Tweak already offers a lot of easy customization on many issues. I think Ubuntu and Linux in general may appeal more to users of concurrent OS-es if it will be easy to customize the LAF as close as possible to their current platforms.

Again i feel like i need to point out this -like 99% of ubuntu-users come from windows and atleast 90% of us still dualboot windows. I myself are old enough to have used amiga-os and had my buttons to the left from mid 80’s to mid 90’s and it was great so i understand where the idea comes from. But in the late 90’s i was forced into windows for various reasons and even if im in ubuntu 80% of my computertime still 15 years of windows use put the buttons to the right. I think this button move to the left is a very naive move full of youthfull stupidness.
Where the buttons is at is not up for discussion about what is the “logical” placement of them. What is important is what os the new and old ubuntu user comes from primary. Do they come from Amiga os or osX or do they come from windows? Should we alienate the windowsusers from our os by making a natural relex something complicated. I dont really know whatyou do at the designteam but i think you should have better things to do the changing the placement of buttons. Grow up damnit!

You guys/gals have a problem of what was not a problem.

Here i am again. I tried to have the buttons at the left for weeks now but i cant stand it. Aneasy way to change them back is ubuntu tweak. This chaning of the buttons is pure naivety and ignorance. as an earlier poster says “you act like this is the first version of ubuntu.

Martin Eriksson,
you browser has probably an add-on to spell check your garbage-post.
spare everyone’s sanity not using using the f*** world in every sentence.
Thank you.

Canonical should follow a new strategy for the launch of Unity.
Below is a link to view the model of the idea.
Community participation and a greater period of development is important.

http://i.imgur.com/pce7m.jpg