Ubuntu Wiki

Phone/tablet

On the phone and tablet, the only appearance configuration should be setting the background picture for the welcome screen (bug 1297418). Therefore the screen should be called simply “Background”.

The “Background” screen should consist of two or more expandable sections:

• “Ubuntu Art”, containing the default background and several others that are installed by default.

• One named section for each extra set of backgrounds installed, if any (bug 1294203). Each of these sections should have a small delete button opposite its name. Choosing it should open an alert asking ‘Delete all {number} images in “{name of set}” from your phone?’, with “Cancel” and “Delete All” buttons, where “Delete All” uninstalls the set.

• A “Custom” section, containing any images that you have added to it and not deleted since, followed by “Add an Image…” and “Remove Images…” buttons.

The section containing the currently selected image should always be expanded, to avoid you losing track of it. (All other sections should be collapsed by default.) One consequence is that if you delete the currently-used image, so that a previously-used image becomes selected, the section containing that previously-used image should expand by itself if it wasn’t expanded already. The always-expanded state should be denoted by a bullet • symbol taking the place of the usual ▶ collapsed or ▼ expanded symbol.

Choosing “Add an Image…” should open an image picker. Choosing an image from the image picker, or an existing image in the “Custom” collection, should open a “Choose Area” full-screen dialog.

If the image was already present in “Custom”, by default the “Choose Area” dialog should show it at its previously chosen size and position. Otherwise, by default it should be centered and scaled to the smallest size that fills the screen. The “Best Fit” button should return to this scale and position, and be insensitive whenever the picture is already at that scale and position. The standard gestures should zoom and pan the picture to choose the area. If you do nothing for five seconds, gesture arrows should pulse into view in the center of the screen, hinting at how to zoom the picture.

Choosing a picture from “Ubuntu Art” should open a similar “Preview” full-screen dialog, but with no zooming and panning, and just “Cancel” and “Set” buttons, because that art is already optimized for the screen size.

The “Preview” and “Choose Area” dialogs should be unique in that the top bar, header, and toolbar should all be semi-transparent, so that you can see what part of the background picture will be visible when those elements are not present.

If you choose “Set”, the zoomed and panned area of the image should be added as the last item in the “Custom” area, with the screen scrolling to reveal it if necessary. It should be possible to add the same image more than once with different zoom/pan settings.

Choosing “Set” should set the background(s), and then navigate back to the top-level “Background” screen, because its thumbnails display confirmation of what you’ve done. No extra notification is necessary.

If you choose “Remove Images…”, the “Add an Image…” and “Remove Images…” buttons should temporarily be replaced by “Cancel” and “No Images Selected” buttons, and the images in the “Custom” section should become selectable. “No Images Selected” should be insensitive whenever no images are selected. Whenever any images are selected, it should read “Remove {number} Images” instead, and choosing it should remove the selected images.

PC

Ubuntu 14.04

The “Appearance” panel’s “Behavior” [sic] tab should include “Show the menus for a window:” radio buttons, “In the menu bar” and “In the window’s title bar”.

Ubuntu 14.10

The Launcher settings should be moved from their three previous locations (“Look”, “Behavior”, and “Displays”) into a single “Launcher & Menus” panel, including the previous menu settings. This will make the Launcher settings easier to find, and also make the contents of the “Background & Theme” panel closer to the “Background” panel on phone and tablet.