Re: Online Desktop run-through

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 15:13 +0200, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> 2008/4/2 Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>:
> >   * When Firefox was started, it came up with two tabs, both with the
> >    Fedora start page
> 
> The two tabs are intentional apparently. See:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=437065

Ah.

> >   * It seemed a little less than obvious that you should click on
> >    the "Enable Online Desktop" link to proceed, especially with the
> >    browser window sitting there. There wasn't a clear flow that
> >    enabling the online desktop was the *first* step.
> 
> Should we set the browser homepage to online.gnome.org?

There's no actual content there, just a login and an account settings,
so I don't think so for now. If we ever add more of a "home page" it
might make sense.

Long term, I think we need a wizard type interface when you log in
without an account previously specified. (That is dependent on being
able to create an "unverified" account without an email round-trip,
since otherwise you are bouncing back and forth between the wizard
and the browser to check your mail.)

> >  ** Bigboard was configured to use the default "Milky" theme rather than
> >    the Fedora theme.
> 
> I will look at this one.

Thing walters already fixed this one.

> >   * When I did click on "enable the online desktop", I then had *three*
> >    browser tabs
> >
> >   * After going to my mail, and clicking on the link, I had *four*
> >    browser tabs.
> 
> Do you expect a different behavior or are you just pointing out we
> open up too many tabs to just get the thing setup?

The latter ... that the user gets a gigantic pile of tabs that's going
to be confusing, and we need to think about how to avoid that. Maybe
just the wizard.

> >  ** A "GNOME Online" person appeared in the People stock.
> 
> I will try to track this down.

This is going to be a server side fix. (Not saying you ruled out from
fixing it for that reason, but there's a lot more setup there!)

> >   * There was no obvious way to add more people to the people stock.
> >    If there are no online.g.o contacts, a minimal thing would be to
> >    have a button to launch Pidgin.
> 
> It would be nice to auto-launch Pidgin on login, except for the first
> login you'd
> just a screen to setup the accounts.
> 
> Perhaps we should have a button which launches/configure Pidgin the
> first time and once things are configured we start it automatically.

That would be slick.

> >   * Hard to find out how to add more stocks to the bigboard
> 
> We could split preferences and stocks management. Preferences could be
> provided by a normal GNOME capplet and stocks configuration by a
> "Widgets..." menu item (or something).

They are split up now, right? That is, they are parallel items along
with Logout in the bigboard menu. A right click menu on the stock
headers with "Remove from sidebar" "Add new widget" or whatever
might provide an alternate route to get there.

> >   * Sidebar Preferences should put a border around the preview images -
> >    they look funny blending into the background.
> 
> Yeah, I'll look at this one.
> 
> >   * Apps stock should be labelled "Applications" not "Apps"?
> 
> I agree, I'll fix it.

Those sounds good.

> >   * In the Apps browser, selecting an application (which shows the
> >    profile to the left) should also highlight the selected app,
> >    since otherwise you don't feel you have good click-feedback.
> >    Same for the People browser
> 
> The interaction with the apps list in the browser is a little
> confusing. You have to click to select and then click again to launch.
> In most cases the selection doesn't seem to provide any additional
> information, perhaps we should rethink this a bit so that we can have
> single click -> launch?

Hmm, that would introduce some inconstancy with the other browsers.
You probably want to be able to explore what apps are there without
accidentally launching them? I guess the question is whether the
browser is for exploration or for launching stuff that you already
know about.

(On the other hand, the files stock on the sidebar feels lie it should be 
single click to open, right click to "Open With" or get more information.)

- Owen