Re: Online Desktop and GNOME 2.22

["John Stowers" <john stowers lists gmail com>]

On 11/2/07, Colin Walters <walters redhat com> wrote:
> John Stowers wrote:
> > But at the moment this particular 'PDA' requires a different way for
> > it to be connected. As I explained earlier, the other 'PDA's we
> > support are either connected(), disconnected(), or we ask for the user
> > to connect them (log in) while we wait. I am interested in providing a
> > consistant way for users to connect their 'PDA's (log in) and I do
> > this by either using programmatic login (gdata for example), or asking
> > them to log in using our simple browser login. online.gnome.org doesnt
> > seem to support either of these scenarios, requiring  a different
> > connection procedure to everyone else.
> >
> > I am really interested in thinking about how to integrate sync into
> > the desktop.
> >
> So I'm planning to spend some time next week taking a look at how we can
> clean up some of the web service authentication in the desktop.  Here's
> a wiki page with some initial thoughts:
> http://live.gnome.org/OnlineDesktop/WebAccountSystem

Cool, sounds good. As I said, the site-specific-browser thing works
quite well. For WebAccountSystem, when the user logs into something,
you might want to consider doing that login with a small ssb - I find
doing so differentiates the process and makes it more obvious to the
user that their action results in a ssb being shown. Launching the
system web browser to log in may result in 1) a new firefox tab 2) new
firefox window 3) new/restore firefox session.

The ssb thing seems more deterministic. You could make the ssb clearly
"Gnome Online Desktop Login" branded. Once all the other things you
mention are sorted out then you should have no problem propagating the
login info from the ssb out to the system browser and the desktop.

[snip]

>
> As Owen said, basically the way we'd thought login to online.gnome.org
> would work is that some part of your desktop (say the personalized
> application launcher) tells you you need to log in, and you click there
> to do so.
> I'm not sure at the moment what conduit would be syncing to/from
> online.gnome.org.

Pretty much anything we currently sync through an intermediary and
that is not a big binary file;
 * Application prefs (we have had our own settings/gconf sync for a while)
 * Tomboy notes
 * Contacts
 * Calendar info
 * Small files (/me ducks)

John

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