Re: Deeper integration with GNOME

[Michael Terry <mike mterry name>]

OK, here is my current take on the Overview page.  This is in trunk right now, if you want to play with it yourself.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/DejaDup/Screenshots?action="">
https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/DejaDup/Screenshots?action="">

1) Your designs assume multiple backup schedules, each with their own settings.  I'm not super excited about the idea.  There's a fair bit of complexity associated with that, both from a behind-the-scenes POV as well as the user experience.  Deja Dup has always aimed at making the basic backup use case as simple as possible, targeting the population of users that wouldn't normally make a backup.  I feel like once a user is thinking about multiple backup schedules, they have graduated to the next tier of backup programs.

See https://bugs.launchpad.net/deja-dup/+bug/324631 where I've long resisted the feature request.  This all said, your design for it is pretty nice.  If I implemented the feature, your design is a good way to do it.

2) For now, I want to stick with an everything-in-one-window design rather than a separate window for preferences.  This is largely to accommodate Ubuntu (its older GTK and in-control-center design makes relying on a header view switcher hard for this next cycle).  And given (1), we can get away with single set of preferences.  Thus, I've put the Overview page among the settings.

3) Notice the On/Off switch in the header bar.  This, we actually *can* support in Ubuntu (control-center actually supported custom right-edge header widgets since 3.4).  This "master switch" fits with other similar settings panels in GNOME and controls whether automatic backups are enabled.  The "enable" hyperlink in the schedule text also flips that switch, for easier discoverability.

4) Given (2), the list box on the left takes up a chunk of horizontal space in the Overview page.  I felt that the two-column layout was a little cramped.  So I tried stacking them vertically.  I think it looks nice in next-initial.png.

5) Once the user enables automatic backups and has backed up recently, you can see how it looks in next-after.png.  That view looks a little bare.  This is where the two-column layout might work better.  I'm not sure what to do about it...

Thoughts?

-mt