Natty’s new Ubuntu One Control Panel takes shape

By , Published January 19, 2011

Long time readers or those with good memories may remember that a new – and very elegant – Ubuntu One control panel was targeted for Ubuntu 11.04.

As we surmised back in July, the aim of the redesigned-application is to’ improve the user experience of using the Ubuntu One service by allowing users to join, sign in and manage their accounts directly from the Ubuntu desktop.’

So how’s progress going?

Pictures speak a thousand words, so here’s a screenshot of how it’s looking in Natty right this second: -

Ubuntu One control panel in Ubuntu 11.04

Elements are missing, naturally. But given we’re not even at the Alpha 2 milestone it’s exciting to see so much of the application has taken form so quickly.

For reference here is what the proposal mock-up looked like:

overviewwindow

Once again remember that this application is still in development. The above screenshot does not represent the look or feature set of the final product.

Related posts:

  1. The Ubuntu One Control Panel: Beauty in simplicity
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  • Anonymous

    It’s looking great and I’d love to use UbuntuOne but unfortunately it still doesn’t work behind a proxy server – 18 months after bug 387308 to add proxy support was filed!!

    • http://twitter.com/utillich Ulrich M. Tillich

      Agreed, this is also the only reason I don’t use UbuntuOne.
      I have been holding up on getting a paid Dropbox account, as I’d rather support Cannonical, but my patience is dwindling…

      • http://pyvore.com/ John Lenton

        For 11.04 the file syncing will work behind HTTP proxies (proxies that you connect to without using SSL) at least. There’s some weirdness with HTTPS proxies…

    • https://launchpad.net/~tim.timwahrendorff rakete

      I am so with you… I cannot understand this strategy, since they want to earn money with ubuntuOne…

      Filesync ok, ubuntu looses nothing, but that I buy my music at amazon or iTunes instaed of the ubuntuOne Music store, because I cannot log in behind a proxy, should be a major deal for canonical…

    • https://launchpad.net/~tim.timwahrendorff rakete

      I am so with you… I cannot understand this strategy, since they want to earn money with ubuntuOne…

      Filesync ok, ubuntu looses nothing, but that I buy my music at amazon or iTunes instaed of the ubuntuOne Music store, because I cannot log in behind a proxy, should be a major deal for canonical…

  • http://twitter.com/McFly81 Christian Lange

    this proposal-mockup looks like it’s copied from OSX – just colors changed^^
    Looks great – but somehow my Ubuntu One (on 10.04 LTS) does only sync files (no contact, no notes, no bookmarks) :(

    • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

      In Tomboy IIRC you need to initiate the sync from Tomboy itself to sync the notes.
      And you need the bindwood plugin for firefox to sync bookmarks.
      I don’t use Firefox and don’t use Tomboy so how well they work, I have no idea, your mileage may vary.

      • http://twitter.com/piratelv Levi

        they have had one for a while now. It’s called mobileMe. I don’t know much about it since i don’t own a mac, but it does basically the same as ubuntuOne.

        • http://openid-provider.appspot.com/hushnecampus Sam Illingworth

          They charge for it though. Ubuntu One’s free isn’t it (or do I only have a cut down version? I don’t use it, I use Google, which is why I don’t understand how Apple manage to charge for Mobile Me)

          • http://pyvore.com/ John Lenton

            Some features (such as streaming all your music to your android or ios device) are payed subscriptions. You can read more at https://one.ubuntu.com/plans/

    • http://risbac.myopenid.com/ François

      If I want to see a OSX interface, I will buy OSX. To copy just give you a sub par experience, and you are just a follower. I even filled a bug report to give some feedback… (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-client/+bug/706920) I would hate to see Ubuntu becoming just a poor OSX ripped off. Come on guys !

  • http://twitter.com/medg85 Matthew Goode

    The banner intrigues me. Advertising?

    • http://twitter.com/yuretsz yuretsz

      Look at the mockup. The banner = clouds picture.

      • http://twitter.com/medg85 Matthew Goode

        Aha! Of course :-) Just found the dimensions of the banner placeholder suspiciously similar to standard web adverts, that is all.

      • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

        What I am wondering is if they are going to use the clouds picture ion their interface how is it going to look when you change the theme?
        I mean it works great on the Installer, but in an installed application?

    • http://twitter.com/yuretsz yuretsz

      Look at the mockup. The banner = clouds picture.

    • Anonymous

      Please dear God hear me and give good advice to the SABDFL so that there won’t be any advertising on Ubuntu.

  • molok

    Why wouldn’t they use standards widgets instead of those hideous nonstardard tabs?

    • Anonymous

      it’s not final *_*

    • http://dylanmccall.blogspot.com/ dylan-m

      I really quite like having separate mode and page tabs (with mode tabs not intended to scale dynamically, to the benefit of design). So, if those tabs at the top were done blindly with a Gtk widget we could expect anyone to use, I would be really excited.

      There are definitely a lot of things in this that would benefit from GTK providing more range. Until that happens, I think doing it by hand (as opposed to pretending GTK is good enough as is) is the best thing they can do.

      On that widget in particular, notice how it doesn’t impose an extra 12 Pixel frame around every other widget in the window to convince you that they are inside its territory. Instead, it’s just clear that it is at the top and the interface survives intact.

    • Anonymous

      I think because the standard widgets are hideous? Yah, I think they are…

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FX5ITOLLHVNOY673XBRGCKF3DI Freddi

        They should (hopefully) be able to do a similar look purely with standard widgets + dark background (see the progress bar in the mock up).

        Widgets can be themed to look like some people want (real GTK tabs can actually look like Apple’s “button” tabs if you use certain GTK themes).

        What I think is contraprodctive, is abusing widgets for wrong purposes (buttons instead of tabs)

      • http://twitter.com/ethana2 ethana2

        Then make a better theme. Don’t use the wrong widget type.

  • http://twitter.com/Ekennes Erik Kennes

    looks alot better then what is currently used

  • Carl

    The top rated comment in the July thread¹ contains some complaints about this design that I think are all well founded. It looks pretty at first glance, but it’s probably a silly way to design an application, after all.

    ¹ http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/07/the-ubuntu-one-control-panel-beauty-in-simplicity/

    • http://cldx.blogspot.com/ Joern Konopka

      I really tried to like the design of this but after all i have to agree with Carl (who in turn agrees with Haegin in the old Thread).

      Anyways, i’m interested especially in what these “mystery animations” might be doing, i hope they are not just eyecandy but actually serve a purpose and i’ll postpone my personal Judgement until i see a more complete version of this. Making a final judgement from 2 Mockups would be kinda senseless. If anybody cares to read the full spec for the UbuntuOne Control Panel you can find that right here btw:
      https://docs.google.com/a/canonical.com/Doc?docid=0AU5sFuLRpCpBZGZra2pqY2pfODY2Z3RnbTl2Z3E&hl=en_GB&ndplr=1

      • Carl

        Interesting. A couple of comments on that specification.

        The section that says “Brief feature outline” actually contains actor descriptions and not an outline of any features. As a result, lines like this suddenly come out of the blindside:

        “Ubuntu enables Tomboy notes, Evolution contacts and Firefox bookmarks services so they are all working by default without any further user interaction”

        So if anyone wants sync of bookmarks, etc. be aware that Ubuntu One does INTEND to support such.

        Furthermore, whilst it contains VERY detailed descriptions of all the use cases you can think of, it contains no rationale whatsoever for the UI design choices, other than that they provide SOME way to satisfy the stated use cases, whether or not it’s a GOOD way.

    • http://fluteflute.myopenid.com/ fluteflute

      The tabs on the screenshot are not intuitive at all

  • Anonymous

    Good work….i like it!

  • http://twitter.com/ThomasBerends Thomas Berends

    yea, that’s what ubuntu needs, ANOTHER control panel for ‘something’… cmon guys… just make one, and put everything there..

    • http://openid-provider.appspot.com/hushnecampus Sam Illingworth

      Seconded. I’m gonna get hate for saying this, but Apple got it right with System Preferences. We have a control panel app in Ubuntu, but it didn’t seem to get much love, which is a shame.

      • http://www.google.com/profiles/ISantop Ian

        # gnome-control-center

        • Anonymous

          Gnome’s control center doesn’t have all the options in it, and it doesn’t have the most important ones prominent. Settings still need work in Ubuntu, I hope that’s a goal for 11.10, Else the simplified GUI work will all be for nothing, as soon as there is a problem, it takes an Einstein to fix it again (“Their words, not mine”).

          • Anonymous

            Perhaps Ubuntu cold make themselves useful and contribute some control panels for the new all-in-one gnome-control-center. currently in development for GNOME3.

        • http://twitter.com/ThomasBerends Thomas Berends

          it isn’t default… new users see a freakin’ fuckload of configuration apps..

      • Anonymous

        Its there already. Read Ian’s comment.

    • Anonymous

      So you think we should just leave the Ubuntu One client? Ubuntu One’s client needs serious work. I like the direction this is going.

  • http://twitter.com/NtynRuben Ruben Verhack

    I found myself lost looking at that screenshot. It is absolutely not consistend with other ubuntu desktop applications.

    I also hate having a “banner” that does nothing more than just making the application bigger than it needs to be. In the second screenshot, the banner has the size of 30-40% of the whole app. What other applications use these?

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FX5ITOLLHVNOY673XBRGCKF3DI Freddi

      The banner looks cool, also with the hybrid theme (dark gray/white) . But I really wonder how it works with small screens of netbooks or tablets (ever heard “vertical screen real estate”?).

  • http://twitter.com/__MsG__ Mathijs

    I think they are misusing buttons as tabs, which is not consistent.

    • Anonymous

      Its Alpha 1, i don’t think this is even publicly available yet. Of course it is incomplete.

    • http://twitter.com/ethana2 ethana2

      I can buy the “incomplete” argument for now, but I would still say I really hope it does not ship like that. I generally have more faith in Canonical than to think it would, but MS and Apple and companies like that make this mistake all the time, so I’d actually be a little nervous over that.

      If they want to make a new theme with a different look for notebook widgets, great, but using something else… please, no. Users may not notice exactly what’s going on, but they will notice the decrease in polish that results.

  • http://owaislone.org/ Owais Lone

    The design team should either tweak the Light themes or whatever it takes to make tabs look like that system wide OR U1 guys should use native tabs in this app. I would prefer the former.

    • http://twitter.com/Magnesus Magnesus

      It’s just a stupic new trend made by Apple – make every application look different (look at the new Apple store for Macs).

      • daas88

        I always thought windows had patented that.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FX5ITOLLHVNOY673XBRGCKF3DI Freddi

      Those “button” tabs do not tell the user that they are tabs (no reference to physical “index cards”). Canonical’s developers should be compliant with the defaults of their own theme.

      If they make these tabs default, then be it like that and good is.

    • Anonymous

      This kind of tabs looks good for configuration stuff, but not for displaying content. The normal tabs look good for content but not configuration dialogs. I can’t help but think that Apple got it right in terms of the visual design of tabs, though the Ubuntu theme in the mockup looks better that the Mac theme IMO.

  • Anonymous

    I didn’t know applications could look that good on Ubuntu

  • http://openid-provider.appspot.com/hushnecampus Sam Illingworth

    How do you launch it? It’s not in my applications folder.

  • http://twitter.com/EuruxD Eustace

    I love it! I’d like to see the tabs as part of the whole theme.

  • http://tech-foo.blogspot.com/ Thomi Richards

    Now all they need is a U1 client for KDE!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FX5ITOLLHVNOY673XBRGCKF3DI Freddi

    If these are used as tabs (dashboard, filders, devices, services), then they should actually be real GTK tabs.

    It would be really poor if the developers stated that way that there are Mac fans. But I have too much confidence in them so that I do not need to think that.

  • http://twitter.com/zc456 Squeaks

    I’m really liking the way Natty is shaping up.

  • Anonymous

    OMG! This is exactly what I have been waiting for! Now, if only they could change the old Ubuntu One logo to the new style, and allow multiple file uploads from the web interface :)
    The syncing of folders on your computers to the cloud is amazing! Even MobileMe does not have this feature (although they provide cloud storage, but not automatically syncing with selected folders around the home-folder..) *Respect*

    Yay Ubuntu One :)

  • http://twitter.com/jgderose Jason Gerard DeRose

    Looks very nice, exciting stuff.

  • Anonymous

    AFAIK GTK doesn’t allow the same widget to be styled differently depending on context. The progress bar in the mockup looks great on a dark background but wouldn’t look so good on a light background and vice versa. It would be nice if Canonical created a subclass of the Tab widget so that they could theme it to look like this, and the same for all widgets that need to have more than one appearance in the same theme. Then in themes that don’t recognize Canonical’s additional widgets they would look like normal Widgets, but in a theme that supports them they can be themed to create a much more sophisticated appearance.

 
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