Request for comments: Unity 2d oriented tutorial guide

[keithpeter]

Hello All

http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/files/unity2dguide7.pdf [1 Mb PDF, 18 pages]

Comments and constructive criticism of this rough draft welcome. Especially the vocabulary I'm using to describe the various features in Unity 2d.

I'm redoing the screen shots using the white high visibility theme already.

I especially want to stay within a default install of Ubuntu 11.10 apart from restricted extras.

PS: the best way to learn about something is to explain it to someone else. If I have got the 'approach' wrong, not in the Unity idiom, then I need feedback on that too.

[castrojo]

This is _awesome_. Have you considered talking to the documentation team about this? This would be nice to have integrated into the normal help system.

[keithpeter]

Hello castrojo

Thanks. How do I 'contact the documentation team'? I'd like to contribute.

This is only a first draft: needs work and needs eyeballs.

[castrojo]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam

Look under "contact information". Cheers!

[JasonFWard]

Hi I read your document, unfortunately for me it didn't tell me anything I didn't know, and it doesn't for me change the fact I really dislike Unity.

One of my biggest bug bears, and a mistake you make in your document too, is that ALT-TAB is in fact no longer something that switches between windows (aka tasks) but in fact switches between applications, something I find as intuitive as beating my head against a wall.

[keithpeter]

One of my biggest bug bears, and a mistake you make in your document too, is that ALT-TAB is in fact no longer something that switches between windows (aka tasks) but in fact switches between applications, something I find as intuitive as beating my head against a wall.

Hello JasonFWard

Thanks for the feedback, the fact that my tutorial for new users chimes with your experience of Unity reassures me that I have not fundamentally mis-understood things.

I need to nail the Alt-Tab behaviour down as I have seen several people commenting on alt-tab only showing applications, not windows.

Remember I am using Unity2d.

I opened three Firefox windows (middle click on Firefox icon in Launcher) and went to various sites. I had the filer window open.

The screen grabs below show


the upper left part of the workspaces view (alt-s) showing the windows on this workspace
what I see when I alt-tab


I'm seeing distinct representations of the three Firefox windows. Is that what you see? Can you confirm that you are using Unity 2d?

PS: my personal peeve is the menu-bar-on-top thing. I'm using F10 and the accelerator keys a lot!

[keithpeter]

Hello All

Cracked it: Unity2d and Unity handle Alt-Tab differently.

In Unity 3d on 11.10, when I have three firefox windows and a filer window open, Alt Tab initially shows only the distinct application icons.

If you tab to the firefox icon while keeping Alt pressed and wait a short time, then the Firefox icon 'explodes' into scaled views of the three windows. See the screen shot here.

All rather swish, just Unity 3d runs like glue on this PC (which does have a blacklisted graphics card).

[apos]

Keith Burnett Teaching maths post-16 in Birmingham UK (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CEsQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsohcahtoa.org.uk%2Fpages%2Ffiles% 2Funity2dguide.pdf&ei=G05CT6qaAcfTsgb47pXOBA&usg=AFQjCNHK83vVCDl0MbrCLtHmB4QCpoT40g&sig2=F2_sSk10j9meLOqSDRYyAw)
This is a full featured unity 2d guide. Probably you could contact him and ubuntu stuff and ask if it would be possible to publish it ubuntu wide? :D