Bad user-friendliness and grammar in "System Restart Required" Dialog/Messages

Bug #211616 reported by Oleg Vaskevich
4
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
update-notifier (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Wishlist
Michael Vogt

Bug Description

Binary package hint: update-notifier

Hello, I am using Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 (Upgraded via Distribution Update from 7.10) with update-notifier 0.70.6.

After upgrading a kernel, or installing important software, an icon appears with a tooltip and message saying that the system needs to be restarted. The design is well made, but the grammar and sentence structure is (really) bad.

This is the tooltip for the icon: "System restart required"
Ok, that's good :)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now this is the message that appears from the icon:

"System restart required
  To complete the update of your system, restart your system.

  Click on the notification icon to restart your system"

Ah! The word system is repeated 4 times!!! This is my suggestion:

"System restart required
  To complete the update of the system, please restart your machine.

  Click here for details..."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And this is the message in the dialog:

"Restart Required

In order to complete the update of your system it needs to be restarted.

Until you do so, security updates may not be fully applied, newly inserted or supported hardware may not function and new services may not be available.

Please make sure that you save all of your work before restarting."

Everything there seems right except for the 2nd sentence. This is my suggestion:

"Restart Required

In order to complete the update of your system, your computer needs to be restarted.

Until you do so, security updates may not be fully applied, newly inserted or supported hardware may not function, and new services may not be available.

Please make sure that you save all of your work before restarting."

The difference: Check the 2nd sentence, and in the third sentence a comma is added near the end.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now the bad user-friendliness. Clicking on the icon shows the dialog, which easily disappears in the mess of the user's desktop. The dialog is not shown in the Alt-Tab Menu or Window List, and gets hidden when "Show Desktop" is pressed. The only way to find it is to minimize all windows. Also, even if it does get hidden, clicking on the icon does not bring it back up top - nothing happens.

As a resolution, making the dialog "Always on Top" may help, so that the user sees what he has to do. And clicking on the icon should bring the window back to the top.

Thank you :)

Attached is a screenshot of the update-manager after a kernel update.

See also bug 93624.

Revision history for this message
Oleg Vaskevich (olegv) wrote :
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote :

Thanks for your bugreport and your suggestion.

We are in string freeze currently, but we should fix it early next cycle.

Changed in update-notifier:
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
milestone: none → later
status: New → Confirmed
Oleg Vaskevich (olegv)
description: updated
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote :

Thanks for the suggestions for the better labeling.

I commited a update for the text into bzr. Its not fully done yet because I don't really like the "your computer" term because update-notifier might be used on mobile device like the nokia n810 which are computers, but not considered as such by the user :)

So a better term like "machine" or "system" would be nice (well, system is already used too much). Suggestions are very welcome.

Changed in update-notifier:
assignee: nobody → mvo
status: Confirmed → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package update-notifier - 0.71.2

---------------
update-notifier (0.71.2) intrepid; urgency=low

  * src/update.c:
    - do not start two update-managers on double click
      (LP: #258128)
    - wording fixes (LP: #254313), thanks to Gabor Kelemen
  * src/reboot.c:
    - change the way gnome_client_request_save() is run
      to work with the latest gnome-session (LP: #214446)
    - better wording in the reboot dialog (LP: #211616)
  * data/apt-cdrom-check:
    - fix edubuntu addon CD detection
  * po/zh_CN:
    - new translation (thanks to Deng Xiyue, closes: #497957)

 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:05:08 +0200

Changed in update-notifier:
status: Incomplete → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Oleg Vaskevich (olegv) wrote :

Sorry for the late response, but I think that this would be better to use, if possible:

Instead of:
40: "please restart it.\n\n"

Use:
40: "please restart your machine.\n\n"

The reason for this is because it just sounds more natural and longer sentences seem to sound better sometimes. :)

description: updated
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