Re: New mockups for shell - round 2

[Ross Smith <myxiplx googlemail com>]

There's no denying that these look fantastic, and there are some
really nice ideas in here.  However, I'm going to part from the crowd
here and say that I actually prefer the current gnome-shell menu to
the one shown.

- This layout looks too busy to me, I like the simplicity of the original
- While having just 7 programs shown may sound limiting, I'm finding
that 99% of the time it just works (and I run a *lot* of software)
- the limited number of items also encourages people to use search.
- I also like the way the original gives equal weight to programs and
documents, encouraging the use of the activities menu to directly open
documents.

With that said though, there are a few things though that are really,
really well done:

- I love the little information button, could I suggest a push-pin to
pin people's favourite items too?
- Love the categories & sorting
- The recent document view is just superb, with everything in
chronological order

Now previously I've suggested making the search pluggable so you can
searching things like firefox bookmarks.

Having seen this, I'm thinking I wasn't going far enough.  Firefox
bookmarks are a great example of something that works as a pluggable
'program' - something you launch.  Firefox history would be a great
pluggable 'document', and I'd really like to have the option to
include those in that  recent document list.

And looking at the recent document view, it appears you've covered how
this would look to the user.  I can think of a couple more things that
would be useful though, and that are not listed here.  With a
pluggable framework, could you just display all registered categories?

The full list of things I can think of that would be useful are:
- documents (with sub-filters for types of document - images,
documents, music, etc)
- Browsing history
- Emails
- chat logs

What I would also say is that an arrow to select just one type of
document doesn't really work.  I want to be able to pick a selection
of things, not just one.  So I might want to see all documents, emails
and chats around a particular period.

And to go a step further, I might then untick documents to just view
emails and chats.  There should be a smooth transition between
selections, with items appearing in their right places in the list.

Would it be possible to use the reverse of the window close animation
for this?  Have all the items appear at the same time, with the
animation for each item being:
- Start from a point of light in the middle
- Expand that to a horizontal line
- Expand that line vertically to the correct size, moving the other
items in the list as this happens to create room.

Finally, the file information pane is SUPERB.  Absolutely stunning,
and I like the way tagging is integrated within it.

I've got a whole load of ideas myself, my graphics won't look anything
like this impressive, but I'll try to get something over in the next
few days for you all to look at.

Ross



On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 9:21 PM, Jeremy Perry <jeremy perry redhat com> wrote:
> Thanks Marina, Jon and  the rest of the desktop team for your thoughtful
> feedback on the previous mockups. I've finally posted some new stuff based
> on this, hope you enjoy.
>
> http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/DesignerPlayground/AppBrowsingAlternative02
>
> The earlier iteration is linked at the top of that page as well.
>
> - Jeremy
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-shell-list mailing list
> gnome-shell-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
>