Re: Online Desktop run-through

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya <marinaz redhat com>]

Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> 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)?
Hi,

Once you enable application tracking, the list should consist of your 
most used applications. You can view popular applications by following 
"Find New Applications"  link in the Applications Browser. If you don't 
have the application tracking enabled, the list will have the global 
list of popular applications.

We did notice recently that the list of your applications in the 
Applications widget did not agree with what was showing up at 
http://online.gnome.org/applications under "Your Application Usage". It 
should (unless you specifically "pinned" some applications to the 
sidebar), so this is a bug that needs to be fixed.

The Applications Browser has a control for selecting the number of 
applications that are visible in the Applications widget. There also 
used to be a "Show in sidebar" check box that allowed "pinning" an 
application in the Applications widget. Having an alternative ordering 
with applications being sorted by most recent use is a good idea, but 
it's not currently implemented. The ability to "pin" an application to 
the sidebar is a good solution for the user who has a new favorite 
application.

Luckily, I have an old version of bigboard on one of my machines, and 
here are some regressions in the Applications Browser that I could 
identify. Judging by the revisions log, they are probably not 
intentional. This explains why you did not think the Application 
overview area carried any extra information. It doesn't now, but it used 
to. I am attaching the screen shots with the older version of the 
Application Browser.

Some observations about these screen shots:
-- In a addition to the sub-header which is shown in gray, there is a 
longer description of the application in the application overview area.
-- There is a More Info link which links to the 
http://online.gnome.org/applications page about the application.
-- There is a "Show in sidebar" check box for pinning the application in 
the Applications widget.
-- The subcategories show only the applications you have used at some 
point. The More links take you to the page with that particular category 
that contains all the applications in that category that you have 
installed, as well as the applications that you have used, even if you 
do not have them installed.
-- The sub-header for the applications that you don't have installed is 
used to say "(Not Installed)". An "Install" button is displayed instead 
of the "Run" button  in the overview area for such applications.
-- The area at the bottom is supposed to be used for "advertising" 
popular applications that you do not have installed. (I don't remember 
if they'd be show in the overview area or you'd be taken to the web page 
about them if you click on one of them.)

Does anyone know if any of this functionality has been removed or 
changed intentionally? If not, it should probably be restored or 
re-evaluated.

Marina