Comment 270 for bug 332945

Jamin W. Collins: By "gratuitously difficult" I meant you had to (1) notice the icon, (2) recall that orange starburst = updates available (possibly assisted by a notification bubble, if you happened to look during the time the bubble was visible), (3) click on it (the panel icon, not the bubble!), and (4) click a button in a separate window. With the behavior I designed, you needed to (1) click the button in the window. With the 9.04 behavior you need to (1) notice the minimized window, (2) unminimize it, and (3) click the button in the window. That's not nearly as good, but it's still easier than the 8.10 behavior, because the window switcher button is (usually much) larger than the icon was.

Uwe Schilling, Thomas Nardone: As I have already explained several times, this is far from the only time programs need to open windows unprompted; and conversely, even with a browser blocking popup windows, a determined Web site author can still open popup windows or things that look like windows. Therefore, trying to distinguish real prompts from fake ones by whether they open manually or automatically is dangerously wrong. Better defence mechanisms include making Web windows more obviously non-native (with help from both the browser and the Ubuntu theme), and more informative handling of downloaded executables (Windows Vista and especially Mac OS X do a much better job of that than Ubuntu does).

pingou67: The old behavior was, and is, unacceptable with the introduction of Notify OSD. "Click on the icon"? What icon?

Imre Gergely: An option like that would be meaningless to most humans, as you'd discover if you tried to mock it up.

Keith Buel: We aim for the point where you wouldn't need to tell your parents *anything* about keeping the computer up to date -- it would be self-explanatory. The icon didn't meet that standard, and never could without disrupting your work like Windows does. The updates window may not meet that standard yet, but we'll fine-tune the design until it does.

hurga, James Dowden: You guys are adorable.

Noel J. Bergman: I have seen no evidence, in this bug report or anywhere else, of "the simple need for a form of persistent notification" for software updates. The closest to this I've seen is a problem where alpha testers tried to report crasher bugs on out-of-date packages and were rejected, but apport could be smarter about inviting you to update, and it's not as if Ubuntu is short of bug reports anyway.

slithy: You have been misled. There is no other "method of handling notifications for updates" planned.