Re: gnomecc-list Digest, Vol 46, Issue 16-- Re: Control center refresh

[Kristin Travis <Kristin Travis Sun COM>]

Hi,

Calum's description is quite accurate, and here is some more info,
describing the short-term options as I see them.  These are also the same options
I'm intending to get user feedback on in a couple of weeks.

1) The existing control center is maintained, with no changes except
that it should be 'on' by default so users know it's there.  Accessing
it by some more obvious method would be preferable too -- maybe something like a
'Preferences' item that leads to the Preferences Control Center
(replacing the 'System Preferences' menu item).

2) A Compact Control Center
Very similar to the first option, this Control Center is more compact
than today's version; white space is reduced so more content is
shown (so there is less scrolling).  Some  minimal categorization
restructuring applies too, such as replacing the older multiple Network options with the NWAM updates,
and adding some Visual Panels areas so we can get user feedback ex. Apache Web Server.

This option is being included on as a result of the recent community
comments.


3) The updated 'launcher' option described to the community recently.
The most substantial change to the existing menus was to group a lot of similar content together. At the same time, we tried to limit changes to the existing dialogs, so that a lot of changes there would not be immediately required.


For the longer term, in the ideal world, option 2 and/or 3 should undergo a review of the dialog screens, since there are some dialogs (ex. Input Methods, multiple Print Managers, etc.) that could be updated to make more usable.  But that work would be further out in time.


Please feel free to send any additional thoughts or comments,

Thanks,
Kristin



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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Control center refresh (Calum Benson)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:34:59 +0100
From: Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>
Subject: Re: Control center refresh
To: William Jon McCann <william jon mccann gmail com>
Cc: Control Center List <gnomecc-list gnome org>
Message-ID: <374183F2-8918-4099-8CF9-F7F9D427C70B Sun COM>
Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed


On 14 Jul 2009, at 23:19, William Jon McCann wrote:

  

One thing that I really like about Matthew's design is keeping
everything in one toplevel window.  But it seems to me like that would
also be possible with the stuff you blogged about, right?
    

I think so... as I understand it anyway, Jenya and Kristin's proposal  
is really supposed to be Phase 1 of a two-phase approach.  The first  
phase being to implement an improved control center that nonetheless  
still just launches the current capplets in their own windows (but  
opened at specific tabs, where required), and the second phase being  
to work on the capplets themselves and potentially integrate them into  
a single window model.

  

Calum, what do you think of http://live.gnome.org/SystemSettings?
And Matthew, what do you think of
http://blogs.gnome.org/calum/2009/07/14/control-center-refresh ?
    

I don't think it's too much different from what I'd imagine Phase 2 of  
Jenya and Kristin's approach could look like, so I think we're  
generally aiming in the same direction.

Interesting to see Matthew is thinking about an explicit menu bar  
though... of course, the Mac's control centre has this as well, but I  
wonder how many people ever notice or need to use it (since in OS X of  
course, the menu bar lives up at the top of the screen).  I'd  
certainly never looked at it before today, and now that I have, I've  
just realised I've been missing the ability to organise everything  
alphabetically rather than by those annoying categories for all these  
years :)

Cheeri,
Calum.