Re: [Usability] Usability and Various Topaz Concept Designs

[Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>]

--- Sarah Berry <sberry grex cyberspace org> wrote:
> Could this be applied in a release in the near
> future?  Making the applications "ego-less," as the
> author calls it, would be a further step towards
> making developers think fo the end goals of the
> software and the tasks we users perform:
> 
> http://browserbookapp.sourceforge.net/topaz/

When it comes to the concept of egoless apps /
document-oriented desktop, I find it hard to filter
out  any dislike I may have for it that's merely
because I'm a grizzled old user of old-style
applications.
But having a Create and an Open menu that almost have
the same items in seems odd.


> This person has come up with the idea of circular
> pop-up menus, reducing the amount of mouse movement,
> amongst otehr benefits.  I do not know if GTK
> currently supports this but it would be, I imagine,
> relatively easy to implelment floating palettes of
> this nature:
> 
>
http://www.daimi.au.dk/~kamstrup/articles/G3-ideas.html
> 
> Do people believe these would be more usable?  

I believe I've read elsewhere that circular pie menus
are a good thing from the point of view of ergonomics.

>  Perhaps, though, GNOME could learn lessons from
> links and use a key to go into a command mode,
> rather than using modifier key combinations.

Enable sticky keys?
 
> Back on topic, I believe that these Lazuli mock-ups
> also show great potential, particular with regard to
> the idea of using the Desktop as a space for Today's
> Items:
> 
> http://desplesdadotcom.nfshost.com/?p=75
> 
> Appointments, tasks, volume of new emails, weather
> reports, news headlines (via RSS),
> Messages-of-the-Day from SysAdmins and so forth
> could all be displayed here.

The problem with that idea is that it assumes and
imposes an office-type environment on everybody.
Many users won't have any of those. Your standard home
user probably won't have appoinments and might use
webmail.
Speaking for myself, I get most of my news and weather
from the radio, and I'm the sysadmin so I don't send
messages to myself ;)

However, I like the idea of removing files from the
desktop and using it for something more interesting.

> Lilburn Topaz Interface Mock-Ups
>
http://members.westnet.com.au/peter.lilburn/sl/tpz1.jpg
> 

Mmmmm shiny.... :)
But what does it all mean?
I see a sort of connecting line between the camera and
the photo app. The idea of linking applications (in
the same way that the command line does) has been
floating around for a while. There's probably a
million wrong ways to implement this, but if we get it
right it would be very cool :)

I think a lot of the changes we need to make will seem
like small changes visually, but a lot of work will
have happened underneath.
Before we can think about the panel menubar, this
needs to happen:
http://live.gnome.org/PreferencesRevisited
Likewise, there's this:
http://live.gnome.org/AppletsRevisited



		
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