Some recent changes

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 10/20/2009 11:01 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote:

> 
> I know the schedule is important, but more times than not in the various
> projects I've worked on, it's the small usability tweaks that get
> dropped, the schedule is used as the justification, and it is a really
> disappointing loss of an opportunity to make a big positive impact.

Desktop UI changes are a bit different in terms of user expectations.
Even a new background tends to get lots of feedback but things like
panel and notification theme changes would certainly evoke strong
reactions. Even a change for the better will be resisted. If you have
had a bad default for a long time and you know it was a bad default
earlier than last week, then it could have changed earlier in the
release cycle. There was even a explicit "fit and finish" effort earlier
where such changes could have been made. Blog about it.

I do understand
> the concern that discussing these sorts of changes openly will turn into
> a useless flame-fest, but if we can apply just a little bit of structure
> to that (maybe a designated feedback period is scheduled into the f13
> feature, for example) the feared flame-fest could be avoided.

The current method seems to be just avoiding any discussions at all
*before* making the change.  That clearly cannot continue to be the
right thing to do. What you suggest would certainly be a big improvement.

Rahul