The reason that many of us don't want to let this issue go is because
all of the justifications to remove tooltips don't make up for the loss
of functionality that can't be replaced.

Hover based tooltips are a powerful model that play a much needed role
in a pointer based UI:

- they do not take input focus away from your current work as click operations 
do
- they do not invoke any pop-up windows that need to be managed or closed by 
the user
- they have no time limit and will stay open as long as the cursor is over the 
icon, even while you work in another window
- they are safe and are not overloaded with an action that also runs things 
(like click).

Hover adds a great deal of comfort for the user.  Anything can be
harmlessly examined without fear of making it do something.  For new
users this is especially important.  Clicking on an icon to learn more
about it will often run it, which is not what you want.  Hover is the
natural "what is this?" action.

Why not simply manage tooltips better?  Move their information around
according to the type of system.  Pointer based systems could use
tooltips while touch based systems could have long-press pop-ups or menu
captions.  Let the user decide when to disable them, move them, even
theme them.  They are essentially information / status objects.  Let's
be creative about what an information / status object can do, where they
can show and then "show as a tooltip" is simply one of the options.

I think what is getting people worked up is that any software designer
can see a number of solutions where we accomplish the "less is more"
objective, address all tooltip concerns and encourage creativity without
having to tell users who love tooltips to take a hike.  As a result, the
current decision is sort of a slap in the face.

I'm not saying that Canonical doesn't have the right to do what they
want with their distribution, I'm just questioning if it is the right
thing to do.

What is wrong with a win/win solution?

-- 
please include status messages/tooltips
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/527458
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.

-- 
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs

Reply via email to