Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu.

“The desktop remains central to our everyday work and play,
despite all the excitement around tablets, TV’s and phones. So it’s
exciting for us to innovate in the desktop too, especially when we
find ways to enhance the experience of both heavy “power” users and
casual users at the same time. The desktop will be with us for a
long time, and for those of us who spend hours every day using a
wide diversity of applications, here is some very good news: 12.04
LTS will include the first step in a major new approach to
application interfaces.

This work grows out of observations of new and established /
sophisticated users making extensive use of the broader set of
capabilities in their applications. We noticed that both groups of
users spent a lot of time, relatively speaking, navigating the
menus of their applications, either to learn about the capabilities
of the app, or to take a specific action. We were also conscious of
the broader theme in Unity design of leading from user intent. And
that set us on a course which lead to today’s first public
milestone on what we expect will be a long, fruitful and exciting
journey.

Complete
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