Final Decision For Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Window Controls Placement Announced By Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth announced seconds ago that the Metacity window controls will remain on the left in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx), however the order will change to: close, minimize, maximize.

Here is his entire comment:

Thank you to everybody who has participated in this discussion.

The final decision on window controls for 10.04 LTS is as follows:

- the window controls will remain on the left, however
- the order will change to be (from left) close, minimize, maximise

The decision is based on the view that putting the close button in the corner will be most familiar to many users, even if the particular choice of corner is not.

For the avoidance of doubt, this is not a comment dependent on the date
:-)

Our intent is to encourage innovation, discussion, and design with the right of the window title bar. We have some ideas, and others are already springing up in the community. We welcome participation on the Ayatana list, where those can play out. This will be a fruitful topic for the design track at UDS in Brussels in May.

This bug is now marked wontfix. Please focus ongoing participation on the opportunities for innovation that this opens up. The decision as to the window controls location and order itself is now final, and as they say in the old newspapers, no further correspondence will be entered
into.

So Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will have the window controls placed identical to Mac OSX. Well, I for one am still waiting for the Global Menu to be included by default like in the website mockups.

If you want to put the Metacity window controls on the right or change their order, don't forget you can use Mwbuttons (Metacity Window Buttons), a really easy to use GUI which comes with presets. Also, now when using another theme (except Dust - but that should be fixed soon), the buttons will automatically move to the right so basically the left-side buttons only apply for the new Light Themes (Ambiance and Radiance)!

Note: Like Mark states, this has nothing to do with 1st of April (just to make things clear!) even though some might consider placing the window controls on the left a bad joke.