Re: one-panel-approach

[Bryan Clark <clarkbw gnome org>]

2009/4/14 Dušan Maliarik <dusan maliarik gmail com>

I think it's not healthy to develop plugin/applet API in time where you don't have any UI in finished state. Not even basic ideas and outlines tested with ordinary users. So please, try to improve whole idea, try to introduce Users to gnome-shell, tell them to use it for a month and then write some summary of how it goes.

I understand how excited by this thing you are, but if you want to redefine desktop, get rid of gnome-panel, you have to think/test/innovate a bit more. imho

If this is aimed at Gnome 3, and all you can comeup is basically expose of workspaces with flat vetrtical list of applications/documents on the side, with basically the same old panel on the top... that's not much.

Maybe the best thing that we could do, is to stop coding, and start thinking. Suck some ideas from MacOS, from Gnome-Do, and maybe forgotten app, but with excellent idea - Gimme.

Make a flat list of all the good ideas, and think alot of how they could work together. I don't like gnome-shell mockups not because of their terrible aesthetics, but becasue I can clearly see that this is not going to work in long term. With current state of designs, it is gonna be just another short time experiment. It doesn't innovate in any way, it just tries to go mainstream by replacing gnome-panel in next Gnome. But it's much of improvement.

I can see that you're very interested in gnome 3 and are concerned about what it will become; it's good to see people really invested and worried about the future of Gnome.

I'm a bit unclear what your intentions or motivations are.  What I'm reading from your message is that you feel gnome-shell is in too much of an early state to begin creating an API or taking over existing gnome desktops.  I'm pretty sure that most people would heartily agree with that sentiment as gnome-shell is in it's infancy and so isn't likely to replace existing desktops soon, if at all.  I think it can, even at this early stage, be a prototype desktop that is available with gnome to get new ideas into the hands of users.

MacOS, Gnome-Do, and Gimme all have lots of great qualities that could really make a desktop of the future worthwhile.  It would be great if you put some of those valuable pieces you see into gnome-shell.  A list of great ideas is an excellent start but ideas are also really cheap, here's my list:

* Sharks with lasers to protect my gnome-shell
* Gnome-shell controlled robots to get me coffeeIt's surprisingly quick to get gnome-shell up and running.
* Bolts of electricity that shock walters' keyboard every time the shell crashes

The truly difficult part, and I think you were hitting this dead on, is to get prototypes into users hands and learn something.  A month might be a long turn around time, but I'm pretty sure you were just throwing that out there as an example.  My understanding is that part of the vision of the gnome-shell is to shorten the developer turn around time in order to make this easier.

Innovation, even if you take the word innovation as only meaning 'a new way of doing things' can easily be found in gnome-shell.  Aesthetics aside I agree with you that gnome-shell isn't selling itself through mockups as well as it could be right now, though (and I feel bad for this) I'm not doing much to help them.  I'm a slacker and have only been moaning about how my nvidia card isn't agreeing with the shell so at most I get to see outlines of applications instead of actually seeing the changes I tried to make.

Some cool pieces I'd suggest looking at are the animations framework as a core piece of the desktop experience, this is something that is a step the existing GNOME desktop cannot easily (if at all) take.  I haven't played with it much yet but you can see pieces of it in the videos they have.  The _javascript_ API is really well done and I've been trying to add bits that will make AJAX like calls out to web services so I can pull in GMail and Planet into the background with a couple lines of code.

Grab me on IRC if you have prototypes you want to chat about.  I'm just making my way around the shell so I might not be as helpful as you need but it seems we've both been thinking about GNOME future stuff for a while.

Cheers,
~ Bryan