Re: Look and Feel

[Jesse Ross]

First of all, the image I posted was just to give people an idea of what
I've been working on. It's rough, I know that. I didn't want to present it
for a few more weeks, but thought it would be good just to show and start
a discussion.

> 1. Menu not on edge of screen, so there's little chance of bumping the
> edge as a way of finding it.

Yep -- bad UI. I hate it to. That wouldn't be it's final home, by any means.

> 2. Suspect that menu items aren't full-width in the menu, but that's an
> implementation issue.

They would be, and if it was up against the left hand side of the screen,
you could move the mouse infinitely left and click the button.

>
> 3. Duplicated scroll bar controls.

I convenience I find quite handy, keeps from moving the mouse too to the
opposite end of the scroll bar if you just need to scroll a line up or
down.

>
> 4. Top file viewer navigation not lining up with columns.
> What's what?  Also, where's its scroll bar?

Just a mockup -- the actual folder elements would be appropriate to what's
in the folder and would sync up with the file viewer nav. File viewer
doesn't have a scroll in this design, it might later though. I'm trying to
find the best balance of compactness and usability still on this one.

>
> 5. Taskbar not as efficient as an appicon stack along a window
> corner, similar to points 1 and 2.

Yep -- lots of people hate the "taskbar". Me too. It was a rough idea, but
still needs to be worked out.

>
> 6. Not sure what the unmarked tic-tac-toe grid is for. I suspect
> this and the calendar would be better as dock apps.

Yep -- they are docklets. See one of the previous mails I sent to the list
today about the description of all the elements.

>
> 7. Not clear how to resize windows... is it those little corner dots?
> Yes, I know other window managers need work on that too.

Yep -- the dots represent arrows in either direction, which seems more
iconic than just the bar that GNUstep currently has.

>
> In general, I think does look like an attempt to make GNUstep a KDE or
> GNOME clone rather than just a modernisation of the NeXT style. I'm
> pretty concerned about the overuse of rounded corners leaving
> dead space, sometimes in the worst locations.

There is a lot of roundness, some will be stripped out, some will remain.
The rounded edges do soften the windows and make they easier to look at. A
lot of people on the list have said that they think it is in the NeXT
style. I guess that's a subjective decision, though. Perhaps you could
explain what defines NeXT to you, and what defines a "modern"-looking
desktop to you, and I can try to implement those details.

>
> The brighter bluer colour scheme seems quite good, though, as does the
> smooth window style. With some narrow line to show where the
> "grab" areas begin and some indication of which window has input
> focus, I think those could be used very well with GNUstep. I'll
> try mocking them Real Soon Now if that's OK with you.

Feel free -- I'd love to see others ideas!

>
> By the way, do you have permission to use the copyrighted firefox
> trademark artwork to promote gnustep? It's not GPL, IIRC ;-)

It wouldn't be in anything used for promotion -- I was just using it as a
temporary icon placeholder.


J.