Re: Call for 2.2 Screenshots

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Fri, 2003-01-31 at 10:30, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 01:00:01PM +0100, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > For the GNOME 2.2.0 release announcement, as well as having
> > functionality-specific screenshots such as the stuff here
> > http://www.gnome.org/start/2.1/
> > we'd like to show people the usual collection of impressive, pretty, and
> > ocassionally wacky full desktop screenshots. So please reply with URLs
> > of your GNOME 2.2 screenshots before February 5th. Please don't use
> > backgrounds that we are likely to get complaints about.
> 
> Side note, on the start page, can you avoid the term metatheme; that
> term should die die die. It's just "theme"
> 
> How about changing the paragraph to something like:
> 
>  In GNOME 2.2, a "theme" is now a collection of subthemes, such as 
>  icon subtheme, GTK+ subtheme, and metacity subtheme. Theme authors 
>  can distribute a complete coordinated package, letting you transform 
>  your whole desktop with a single download. And it's easy to become a 
>  theme author: just set up your desktop, click "Save Theme," and 
>  upload the theme to your web site.
> 
> Also, the "start" page is not nearly long enough; there are *lots*
> more little things we could mention. I'd suggest making a screenshot
> of those things, rather than just random shots.
> 
> On a high level, suggest organizing by feature, not by "panel" and
> "nautilus" - if you organize by feature, the features get more
> attention, and your number of subheads grows with the feature list,
> and isn't bounded by the size of the module list. ;-) Also some
> features may span modules.
> 
> Here are some other things we could mention, just a start, some are
> already there I guess:
> 
>  - metacity (it's new in this release)
>  - vte (full AA text, full unicode, no flicker)
>  - Network Servers
>  - the notification area
>  - the show desktop button
>  - xrandr support - dynamically adapts to resolution changes
>  - CD burning thingy
>  - transparent panel (as much as it pains me)
>  - startup notification
> 
> I would also suggest a "preview" section showing fontilus, gucharmap,
> rpm view, etc.  "already working for 2.4"
> 
> In addition to new things some part of the page should mention old
> things that are GNOME strengths; stuff like accessibility, gconf,
> simplicity, speed, whatever. At least one section title should contain
> the words "business" or "enterprise" - jdub probably has good ideas
> for features to mention there.
> 
> All the screenshots should be "nice" rather than "leet" - subjective I
> know, if in doubt ask tigert and jimmac. ;-)
> 
> Finally I would add an applications section, "applications for GNOME," 
> in which we list and have screenshots for things like AbiWord,
> Gnumeric, etc., since GNOME is not a giant umbrella project, it's
> intended to be used with lots of other pieces.
> 
> </marketing>
> 
> Basically, with a little work we can make people far more excited
> about 2.2 than they will be reading the current page.

To be honest, long-term, this needs to be the job of someone other than
release team; it really sucks that this falls on our shoulders when we
should be working on making sure the software is good. If anyone wants
to step up and start a community marketing team that release team can
coordinate with, it'd be very, very welcome.

Luis