Friday 13 June 2014

How I would change the Unity interface.

Basically I would just want to give out some ideas on how to improve Ubuntu's Unity interface.

Three words :Optimization,Customization and interchangeability.

Let us start with a simple and short one: Optimization.
Users want to run their applications without worrying about system performance.Users also want rapid logon times.I think Canonical should use their development resources to make unity rapid fast.And they should not stop until they reach the speeds of lightweight desktop environments.Unity as it is now is beautiful enough so they don't have to worry about that.

Customization :
Unity lacks a lot of customization options.Users should be able to move the launcher around the screen.What if I want the launcher to be on the right side of the screen?Or the bottom?Or the upper part of the screen?One other thing that the users should be able too is to change the color of the top bar and the launcher.One other thing I would really want to see is the option to remove the top bar completely.Right now that bar is nothing but a remnant of the gnome days.I would put all the functionality of that bar(the mail and social buttons,time and date,shutdown options and other menus) inside a new dock applet.The reason why the top bar bothers me and many people is that nowadays we have widescreens.And on widescreens there is not enough vertical space for horizontal bars and menus(which in themselves are remnants of the times before widescreens became common).Or at least an ability to move the top bar to the side.

Interchangeability:
Canonical should make unity more friendly and accessible to other distributions.If they did that they would get a lot of new developers for Unity from other distributions.If they just keep their own maintainer at the top of the Unity project they would still have more than enough control over the project and it could slightly improve the relations of Canonical and the rest of the Linux community.

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