'Restart Required' alert is poorly worded

Bug #397324 reported by Vish
18
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
One Hundred Papercuts
Fix Released
Low
Unassigned
update notifier
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

When updates that require a restart have finished installing, an alert appears saying:
------------------------------
Restart Required
In order to complete the update of your system it needs to be restarted.

          Restart Later Restart Now
------------------------------

The main text of this alert is clumsy. Instead, it should say: "The computer needs to restart to finish installing updates. Do you want to restart it now?"

Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

Attached the Comparison of the images of the restart dialogue of Windows, Ubuntu, Apple

Note the warning colors and dialogue in the Windows dialogue , which the average user is accustomed to in Windows OS

description: updated
Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

Mockup of the system security updates dialogue.

Here also, when the user selects the "Ensure Maximum Security" , he is presented with the Dialogue to Save & close all work.

Changed in hundredpapercuts:
status: New → Confirmed
Vish (vish)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
jorge cob (jorgecs10) wrote :

"Deliberate switch of the buttons , So that the continue working option is located on the right, which is the location of all the 'Close' buttons."

In gnome the button on the right side of dialogs is the "affirmative button", and to its left if the "cancel button" so the order depends on the dialog's text, IMHO given the text you suggest maybe isn't even necessary to have both buttons, I think a "close button" should be enough.

See more here: http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/windows-alert.html.en#alert-button-order

Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

@jorge cob:
I understand that the affirmative action buttons are on the right,
But here this is not a simple affirmative action, since clicking on the right button in the present dialogue will immediately restart the system without warning.

Also the presence of the Button on the left[in the mockup] allows the user to restart if he chooses to.

I based my mock-up on the file-roller end-of-extraction dialogue.
In the file-roller too, the close is on the right which just dismisses the dialogue.

Vish (vish)
summary: - Pleasant Updates for Karmic
+ 'Restart Required' alert is poorly worded and misleading
Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

In future we want to distinguish between updates that will require a restart, and those that won't, before you even download them. That way you can click an "Install and Restart" button that doesn't need to prompt you later about *really* wanting to restart; it will all happen in a single action.

To address the points in order:
1. As long you don't restart, you are still running the old, insecure versions of the packages that required a restart, therefore the update has *not* completed.
2. You should not need to worry about closing all running apps; that's handled by session management.
3. There are bigger problems with the sentence: the phrase "In order to" is a needlessly long version of the word "To", and the "it" is ambiguous (does it refer to the "system", or the update?).
4. Even if restarting is scary for Windows users (which seems implausible), we don't do ourselves any good by pretending a restart of Ubuntu is anything other than a restart. I think almost everyone would be unpleasantly surprised that a button labelled "Use Latest Version" restarted their computer.
5. What?
6. Same as #2.

So as far as I'm concerned, this alert would be fixed if the text was changed to: "The computer needs to restart to finish installing updates. Do you want to restart it now?"

Vish (vish)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote : Re: 'Restart Required' alert is poorly worded and misleading

@mpt:
1: I'v explained why its not needed in the Ayatana page.
2. the session management will bring back the apps, but there is considerably high risk of the user loosing his work.
4. the problems with using a windows system without a restart are quite well known and Any word with a prefix "re" is an indication of repetition. Psychologically , any repetition is never a pleasant feeling , rather a frustration

But I realize that the idea i proposed is incomplete and beyond the scope of papercuts , so I'v *edited the bug description* , to keep this within papercuts project , as you also feel that the dialogue needs a re-write.

And I'v expanded my idea and moved the discussion to Ayatana > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ayatana/UpdateIssues#Hassle-Free%20In-Session%20Updates

Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

After discussion in irc, Assigning to mpt , as he agrees this can be improved.

Changed in hundredpapercuts:
assignee: nobody → Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
importance: Undecided → Low
milestone: none → round-10
status: Confirmed → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

Thanks mac_v for writing that up. I've read through the page, and it has some good ideas -- for example making the alert less scary by using an updates icon instead of the /!\ icon, and showing the download size. Other ideas I have no hesitation in dismissing as crack, ;-) such as replacing "restart" with the hand-wavingly vague "start afresh".

I will take all these ideas into account in more detail when fully specifying the presentation of software updates. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareUpdatePresentation> In the meantime, for Karmic, I think we should simply correct the sentence, so I'll update this bug report accordingly. Feel free to report individual bugs on other individual problems.

description: updated
summary: - 'Restart Required' alert is poorly worded and misleading
+ 'Restart Required' alert is poorly worded
Changed in hundredpapercuts:
assignee: Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) → nobody
Changed in hundredpapercuts:
milestone: round-10 → round-9
affects: update-manager → update-notifier
Changed in update-notifier:
assignee: nobody → Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)
status: New → In Progress
Michael Vogt (mvo)
Changed in update-notifier:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Vish (vish)
Changed in hundredpapercuts:
status: Triaged → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

This bug was fixed long back by Scott Ritchie's branch.

Changed in update-notifier:
assignee: Scott Ritchie (scottritchie) → nobody
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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