ubuntu lacks ideas, firefox is full of ideas

[Pedro Bessa]

""The Unity API is minimal. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/LauncherAPI I 
can't position, I can't edit, I can't remove and I can't add anything.""

"You are comparing a very mature and years old product Firefox with a 
very recent app called Unity. I am not a Unity dev but I would 
personally prefer that they put more efforts in making Unity more stable 
and smooth than adding customization options and making the path towards 
breaking unity more easier."

Ubuntu 11.04 was unstable, but Ubuntu 11.10 is already stable, so it's 
time to add customizations. Stability is good, but not everything. 
Usability exists too. I think Ubuntu is mainly worried about usability. 
It's Debian that is mainly worried about stability.

Firefox has XML with getElementById, insertBefore, 
getElementsByClassName etc and that's how you position things anywhere 
you want. The Unity source code has some xml already, so the Unity 
developers have to add the rest of XML to the Unity source code.

Imagine the experimentation that would happen. It would be awesome, like 
Firefox is. Features that you weren't expecting would be added to Ubuntu 
by the others and if you're a programmer, you would be able to surprise 
the others too. Maybe, Windows or Apple would copy the easy platform 
customization from Ubuntu which copied from Firefox.


""You said you don't want customizeability (I mean, you make unity have 
unmodifiable defaults) and you said you want more apps (I mean, you put 
a huge effort in the Ubuntu Software Store), but these two things are a 
contradication, because *if we can't do anything,""

"It isn't contradiction. Think about it, write an app which makes a 
beautiful UI for editing preferences already exposed by Unity. Put it in 
software center. Plus non customization doesn't mean it is contradiction 
to app development. If you are writing a word processor app or a media 
player app how does it matter that for that app to run Unity needs to be 
more customizable?"

Gunity, Confity, MyUnity even CompizConfig already customize unity that 
way and it's unsatisfying.

You want to invite more apps and you're seeing a way to invite more 
apps, which is giving the power to change the platform like Firefox did 
and worked, but you're dropping the way to invite more apps. I pinpoint 
that it sounds weird.


""why should we develop apps for you*?""

"What do you mean by we? It can be reworded as "why should *I* write 
apps for you". Plus I don't know where we are going with this *you* and 
*us* mentality."

We programmers like Firefox and Chrome extension programmers. Sometimes, 
we feel like the platform should be changed. The Windows 95 look is 15 
years old. The Ubuntu decision team got the taste of changing the 
platform, but we didn't and we would be excited to change the platform.


""Plus, Firefox writes tutorials that start from overview, allow to go 
in-depth, have examples and I think Ubuntu should do that too""

"developer.ubuntu.com is aimed towards that"

sry about this part


double quotes -> Pedro Bessa
single quote -> Manish
no quote -> Pedro Bessa