Re: To answer your question about the upcoming Style-Guide...

[Tom Vogt <tom lemuria org>]

George <jirka@5z.com> wrote:
> > > 1) the icons WILL stay the same size
> > a possibility to resize will be necessary in the long run. there simply is
> > no other way to please everyone from 640x480 to 1600x1280.
> 
> well we're more looking at 800x600+ ... at that resolution it's still ok ..

sorry, but you're kidding, no?
gnome WILL be used on about anything inbetween the two resolutions I
mentioned, any bet. 640 is still quite common on laptops. if you think pda's
we'll even go far below that. 1600 is quite common for 21" monitors or
graphics workstations. I would almost bet we have at least one 1920x1600
user here (raster? :) ).

plus things are moving to higher resolutions, if only for smoothness. who
knows what the main res will be in 2001 ? and we ARE building for 2000+
aren't we?

> you have to consider that if the icons are small then the applets will
> make the bar too wide and the icons will be hanging around in space ...

that's why I'd say "resize"


> resizing applets would be hard if not impossible ...

at a first step, it could be an actual scale (maybe with cache to save cpu
time). but in the end, I guess there has to be a way to support different
resolutions. hell, even windoze has at least the good intention with the
"small" and "large" icon checkbox.


> it's very hard to write an applet under 48 pixel width .. and the panel
> is supposed to be a dynamic entity

I agree that this is a hard thing implementation-wise. I still think it's
necessary.


> > in other words: with the current default config we could as well remove all
> > the customizability code from the panel as it will never be used anyways.
> 
> not with the current setup of the menu ... unless they are afraid of the
> interface, they WILL find out how to add stuff ...
> 
> anyway .. I did sit someone in front of it ... people do tinker, but 
> it depends if the person wants to tinker or not .. a lot of people don't,
> and won't no matter of how obvious you make it

that is true. and it's also true that it depends very much on who you put in
front of the machine. my victims were novice users and other non-nerdish
types, people who ARE afraid to tinker. should we take away most of the
power of gnome from them? I thought the "for nerds only" button was one of
the things we were trying to put away with?
see what I'm going at? exactly those people have to have it right in their
face what they can do. these are people who will NEVER find out they can
roll up the window in afterstep by clicking on the title bar, because unless
there's a big red "click me!" button there, they won't even THINK about it.

I really want to make gnome useful for THOSE people. everyone with half a
clue can figure it out for himself.


-- 
The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken.