Meta discussion: codec support
This issue is a sub-thread of #1049 (closed).
One of the types of software currently handled by Software is codecs. To me this doesn't seem to be performing well from a UX perspective:
- If you browse to codecs, it's not clear what to install (or indeed, what not to install). The UI isn't very helpful, but then it's hard to imagine a great codec browsing experience.
- If I search for something like "mp3", the codec results are buried at the bottom, way out of view.
- If something like Videos asks PackageKit to install a missing codec, the experience isn't great - it doesn't always work, the number of steps the user has to go through is high, and the user is confronted with a list of search results that they have to go through one by one and install
These issues are very much design problems and I have to accept some of the blame here.
In general my feeling is that users just want everything to work, either with no interaction required, or with a single click "install all the things" approach. Are we able to make that happen? Is that a problem that needs to be solved downstream rather than upstream? Maybe Software shouldn't have to care about codecs at all?