Re: [gnome-love] GNOME user environment brainstorming

[Iain <iain ximian com>]

On 24 May 2001 23:23:29 +0100, Matthew Walton wrote:
> Okay, just some random thoughts. Total crap, I'm sure.
>
> Havoc Pennington wrote:
>
> > Our thought is something like:
> >   http://people.redhat.com/~hp/starthere.png
> That's nice. I like.

Why can't we put this stuff on the Desktop like we used to?

> > No doubt the name "Start Here" is controversial, other suggestions so
> > far are "Lobby," "Foyer," "Launchpad," "Begin," "Begin Here," "Hat
> > rack," "Master Control Program," etc. it was mostly downhill from
> > there. User testing is the obvious way to resolve this issue, so let's
> > avoid a long thread. ;-)
> "Start Here" is a horrendous name. Can't think of anything great right 
> now though :-) I'm not good with names.

Start here is ewwwwy.

> - being able to add things at least would increase the 
> functionality vastly 

Being able to remove it entirely would help mine. I hate things like
that on my desktop :) Like the ~/Nautilus folder that just won't go
away.


> > There's some possible confusion about shortcut buttons on panel vs. on
> > desktop, especially since panel icons require single-click, desktop
> > double-click.

Unless it's been set to single click.

>  It always 
> seemed obvious to me, and it's the same way most people's Windows 
> systems work (assuming they use their QuickLaunch bars, that is).

More people I know use the desktop for program launchers than the quick
launch bar, simply because the desktop holds a lot more stuff, has more
informative text and larger icons.

> > - make Run Program dialog have a browser CList that shows all known
> >  programs, with icons if any, and ability to sort by executable name, 
> >  human-readable name, by clicking headers. Probably not a tree, just
> >  an alphabetic list.
> Why?

Yeah, why? Apart from "Because thats what windows does" If it's going to
have every program in the path, thats overwhelming, and if it's going to
only have gnome apps, then why duplicate the operation of the menus?
I think to leave the run dialog as it is (maybe prettier) is perfectly
okay.

> > - delete all the non-default clock applets
> Please do. They're all awful.

Delete all the duplicate applets (mainly this is in the monitors section
too).

> > - Remove or configurably remove folder heading things from Programs
> >  menu, based on Calum's usability test
> Configurably I think.

They're off with Ximian's patches and the menus look so much nicer IMO
:)

> > - Turn off text for toolbar icons by default?
> I'd say no to that... although to be honest, it never looks right with 
> text or without it.

Maybe allow "Priority text" like Bonobo does. So that important buttons
have the text to the right of the icon, and the rest don't. 


> > - Downplay web browser aspect; Mozilla/Galeon encouraged for real
> >  browsing. (Alternative: follow Galeon and try to be a full web
> >  browser, but seems like it would cause a lot of clutter.)
> Get rid of it totally. That's probably a bit of a radical way to go 
> about it though... still, it seems fairly pointless to me. Yes, it's 
> what Konqueror does, but do we want to be copying Konqueror all the 
> time? Even Microsoft have kept some kind of distinction between their 
> file manager and web browser, even if they are the same program underneath.

If we could make a seperate package for just the GtkMozEmbedded stuff,
then we could offer Galeon as the GNOME web browser, and Nautilus could
still do the embedding stuff if it/the user wanted.


> > - destroy gnome-help-browser, use Mozilla/Nautilus/something always
> Once Mozilla's finished and running faster than a drunken elephant, yes. 
> Not that that stops me using it...

A simple GTKHtml browser could be written. I don't see documentation
having much in the way of CSS, Javascript etc. And from the browser that
was formerly known as Encompass showed, it was capable of loading it in
seconds :)

i