What is the accessibility impact of this new mechanism of accessing "applet like things"? Does this "just work" with accessibility? If not, what is our plan to make it accessible?
Also, how does this relate to gDesklets? Although giving users choice to customize their desktop is a good thing, I hope we aren't going to end up with a mish-mash of random eyecandy that doesn't work well or integrate together. > 2.1. Project Description: > > Avant Window Navigator (AWN/Awn) is a dock-like navigation bar for the > desktop. > > > 2.2. Risks and Assumptions: > > 1. Through the preferences of AWN, AWN manager, user can add new applets, > which > is developed by third-party or someone, but they are not stable or > missing > some dependencies required to run , so may cause some error. So if > user like to add new applets, should go to Applet Gallery, and > install the > stable ones. Do users need to compile code to install a new applet, or are the applets interpreted (e.g. Python code) so that users can just install an applet and it will just work without needing to do extra complicated things like compile code? > If someone develop the applet for AWN, should follow Applet > Submission at http://wiki.awn-project.org/Awn_Extras:Applet_Submission Could you give some examples of what sorts of applets are available for this framework? What applets are installed by default and what do they do? How active are third parties or individuals at creating applets? I notice the Applet Gallery you describe is here: http://wiki.awn-project.org/Applet_Gallery Which ones will we be shipping, if any? > Avant Window Navigator (AWN/Awn) is a dock-like navigation bar for the > linux desktop that positions itself at the bottom of the screen. It > can > be used to keep track of open windows and behaves like a normal window > list, you can also add a place or location (home folder or a drive for > example) to the dock. So to make you have control of your computer just > from the dock. Although it does look cool, I worry that it will confuse users if we provide another interface that works very similar to gnome-panel. I would appreciate more information about what our future plans are. Will avant-window-navigator replace gnome-panel, will it be used together with gnome-panel, or is it expected that users will pick one or the other to use? Perhaps you could explain a bit how you expect users would actually use this in relation to gnome-panel. If they are intended to be used together, then is it likely that users be confused by having two sets of interfaces that do very similar things? If the intention is that users would use one or the other, then how do users pick which one to use? In GNOME we already support two window managers (metacity and compiz). Users can easily manage switching between the two because the GNOME configuration dialogs allows users to pick which one they will use. This way users are prevented from possibly trying to run both at the same time, making a more sane user experience. Is switching back and forth between gnome-panel and avant-window-navigator managed in a similar simple fashion? > AWN is a dock-like bar which sits at the bottom of you screen, > allowing > you to launch and control applications. Also has the ability to embed > external applets. Look and feel are fully customisable, and theming > support is also available. > > AWN ships with only the Launcher/Taskmanager applet. Many other > applets, > such as the Main Menu, "Stacks", CPU meter, and GMail notifier applets > can be found in Awn Extras. Once you have installed some applets, you > can add them to the dock via awn-manager, in the "Applets" section. > > User also can develop plugin for AWN, which allow already-existing > applications to interact with AWN. Awn Extras is a project focusing on > providing a number of important applets (not unlike the panel applets > for > Gnome and Xfce) in a single package, along with a number of plugins > that > allow applications to better interface with Awn's task manager. > These applets range from a Trash applet to fancy workspace switcher. > To obtain them, follow the Awn Extras download instructions. You will > find the plugins in /awn-extras/awn-plugins. Will we be integrating any of these Extra plugins with this case, or a separate case? Or are you just informing us that end users can install additional applets if they wish? If we aren't shipping any plugins with this case, how useful is avant-window-navigator? In other words, do users need to install any extra plugins for it to be really usable? > The applets included into the core distribution of AWN > > 4.4. Out of Scope: > > Applets developed by third party developers. It is not clear to me if this refers to the "Extra plugins" or not. Brian
