Canonical is sticking with moved window controls for now

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth says he will stick with the choice to move the three buttons in the title bar of the upcoming beta1 of Ubuntu 10.04 to the left. Many users call this choice unfortunate.

In the latest alpha version of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, not only the Light theme was introduced, the developers also decided to move the minimize, maximize and close buttons in the title bar to the left. In all previous versions of Ubuntu, and in almost all Gnome environments in other distributions, the buttons are on the right side of each window. The change provided the necessary criticism of users, because they could not get used to the new location of the buttons. The developers would also not have made it sufficiently clear how they arrived at this choice and the consistency of the gui would be at stake.

Mark Shuttleworth, the former boss of Canonical and still closely involved in the development of Ubuntu, late in a response on Launchpad know that the changed layout of the three buttons in beta1 will be maintained. He states that the new design on the right side of the title bar has freed up space that Canonical wants to use in upcoming Ubuntu versions for ‘some innovative options’. Which these are, Shuttleworth leaves open.

Nevertheless, Shuttleworth also states that the choice made by the Canonical design team is not yet final and that there are also enough reasons not to implement the change in Ubuntu 10.04. In addition, he points to the possibility of moving the buttons back to the right with the gconf tool, which can also be done with the latest Ubuntu Tweak tool. executed. Finally, Shuttleworth writes that the many feedbacks have shown that changes such as the layout of buttons on the title bar are very sensitive and that Canonical wants more feedback in order to make a good choice.