Ubuntu: Why the Buttons Were Moved in 10.04

When Canonical decided to move the close, minimize, and maximize buttons in 10.04 to the left side of the window, Mark Shuttleworth simply said that something very exciting was going to go on the right side.

Now we know what that is.  Window Indicators, or “Windicators” are going to go in their place.

This area will be used similar to the indicators near the clock in ubuntu.  Small buttons will provide volume control per application (using features that pulseaudio already provides), online/offline status, and status messages (such as saving, etc).  This will allow the status bar of many applications to be moved to be removed, and those buttons placed at the top of the window.

Issues?

I have mixed feelings on this.  One part of me celebrates a change like this, with Ubuntu blazing their own path, but another part of me absolutely hates this change.  Most people are intuitively used to clicking in the top right corner to open/maximize/close a window.  Now this fundamental design choice has been changed, which will take some getting used to.

Also, as far as I can tell, this is going to require developers to modify their programs to support this (hopefully I am wrong though).  If Ubuntu is the only distro that does this, how many developers will do this.  What about KDE?

Mark goes into a lot more detail on his blog:

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/333