Re: Online Desktop run-through

["Marco Pesenti Gritti" <mpgritti gmail com>]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> wrote:
>  > >   * 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.

Yeah, I was thinking in perspective there.

>  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.)

Make sense in general to me. I'm not sure it should be a wizard dialog
though, it could just be a web page displayed in the browser (we start
it up by default anyway).

>  > >  ** 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!)

Heh ok, I'll focus on the client stuff for now and leave this to someone else ;)

>
>  > >   * 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.

I will look into it then.

>  > >   * 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.

I doubt a right click menu would be more discoverable :/

The idea was to keep it inside the bigboard menu (which the user *has*
to discover if nothing else to be able to logout), but labelled more
explicitly, "Widgets..." for example. Which would require to split the
non-widgets preferences out of that dialog, presumably to a capplet.

Obviously there is some value in keeping all the bigboard preferences
together, so I'm not sure it's a good idea.

>  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?

My feeling is that there is enough information in the main view to be
able to explore them. Consistency between the browsers is a good point
though.

>  I guess the question is whether the
>  browser is for exploration or for launching stuff that you already
>  know about.

Yeah. My understanding of the Applications widget is still poor. How
does popular applications affect the list exactly? Is there any way to
expand the number of items in the widget either manually or on the
base of the latest/most used applications (by the local user)?

Marco