update-notifier & non-admin users

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Michael Vogt wrote on 20/10/08 17:11:
>...
> We use this to on hardy->intrepid upgrades to tell each user about the
> changes with the fast-user-switcher applet and provide them with a
> (optional) "update-my-config" script. 
> 
> I would like to ask for feedback on this update-notifier feature and
> attention when testing if running it for non-admin users causes any
> problems (crashes, UI issues etc).
>...

I think we should rethink how update-notifier works and what sort of
information it can present.

In the fast-user-switcher case, we wanted to present a simple alert
containing two illustrations and two buttons
<http://paste.ubuntu.com/56038/>, but update-notifier was incapable of
doing that, and what it shows now instead is highly unfortunate. (The
buttons aren't even lined up.)

More generally, we need to move away from the pattern of putting tiny
icons in the panel and expecting people to click them to do something
urgent. For example, if an updated Firefox will start malfunctioning
unless you relaunch it, that should be an alert against the Firefox
window with "Relaunch" and "Quit" buttons, not a tiny icon in the panel
that opens a window containing instructions to follow.

Cheers
- --
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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