Ah yes... I remember the look of AIX from visiting my dad at IBM ages
ago. Now he works from home using Windows, but spends much of his day
remotely logged in and working in pure text on his VM account that
dates back to the 60's or 70's.
I think that old AIX model of handling windows and minimized windows is
on the right track. Of course its nice to be able to easily access
minimized items even if your desktop is blanketed in windows... but I
guess a simple 'show desktop' shortcut or button fixes that. I like how
they handle that in Mac, where you hit the button and all your windows
slide to the edges and then slide back into place after you've done
whatever you need to do on the desktop. Personally, my motivation
against additional screen elements is that we already have too many.
The proliferation of panels and applets and menus is infuriating, to
me. And this is true across all OS's. Its strange to say so, but I
really despise the top + bottom panel default configuration in GNOME.
Its too much, its confusing (and for new users, a visual assault), and
it wastes too much spaces, particularly as computers transition to
widescreen. And vertical screen space is crucial! I'm tired of
scrolling down constantly! This criticism also applies of course to
Apple and their decision to have both a horizontal menu bar and a big
honkin' horizontal dock, especially when all their machines are now
widescreen. Its awful and stupid.
Strangely, I find that Vista's setup draws my ire the least. Just one
taskbar. Set it to auto-hide and throw it onto the left edge of the
screen. Not fancy, but it works. I mostly ignore it unless I actually
want to launch an app or access the system tray. In Vista I use
'switcher' which is basically an expose clone... between that and
alt-tab I'm pretty happy, but I'm thinking about looking for a
workspace manager to reduce clutter and divide up tasks.
-Sumit
xl cheese wrote:
When I worked at IBM we used AIX linux. The desktop doubled
as the dock. Windows were minimized to the desktop and there were no
docks or task bars to hold your working apps. Just a big ol' ugly
panel.
See the minimized apps in the upper left corner:
http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/screenshot.php?bsgfx=ibm/aix/aix53-scr-08.jpg
http://www.jfedor.org/shots/aix2.gif
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 18:20:58 -0800
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [ubuntu-art] next meeting
I agree. I really like a lot of things Apple does to improve usability
and the quality of the user experience. The dock is not one of them.
Ubuntu should be like Toyota: pillage the best ideas, parts, and
features from its competitors and scrap the rest. Improve on those
stolen ideas. Toss in a few new innovations. Release.
I'm honestly not particularly happy with any of the
dock/taskbar/whatever solutions in any OS, whether it be Mac, Linux, or
Windows. I set the taskbar or dock to auto-hide and generally either
alt-tab or 'expose' to the window I need. While we obviously couldn't
implement it into Heron, we should start thinking of what a true step
forward would be in this regard (honestly, how long has the
taskbar been around now?!). I think the way forward would be to in some
way eliminate the paradigm of taskbar or dock items representing open
windows and instead work with a unified system in which it is always
the windows themselves that you are selecting. This could mean perhaps
that visible windows do not appear in the taskbar, and that minimized
windows are shown in the taskbar as live images of the window with
overlayed text identifying it (this is pretty similar to minimized
windows in Mac's dock). With intelligent implementation of multiple
desktop spaces and 'expose' the need for a traditional taskbar
diminishes.
'buttons' in the desktop manager should be for launching applications
or other such actions. Active windows should be represented as exactly
that: windows, even if in miniature form in a taskbar/dock or in a
tiled form (expose).
Anyways, just my 2 cents...
-Sumit
Webmaster, Jhnet.co.uk wrote:
Docks
are a problem (though the rest seems alright)
1) None of the docks out there work properly without compositing
2) None seem to be stable
3) They are not actually as good as a task bar (in many people's
opinion)
4) The implementations that I have seen do not work as well as apples
dock (which is only barley functional enough to be usable).
5) They take up way to much screen space for the functionality they
offer (e.g. if you run several document windows you have a screen full
of open office icons but no way to differentiate between them).
So from these points I think docks would not be a good way to go (but
if there is space I definitely thing they should be included, after all
they are popular amongst some people, especially Mac refugees.
I do think the rest of your suggestions were quite valid though, good
ideas (at least worth including over some of the themes that come
included with Ubuntu).
Jonathan
On 06/02/2008, sylvain marc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Good,
i think i could be here (i hope).
The recent wallpaper "kuti heron" is a verry good idea...
(black for ubuntustudio / brown for ubuntu / bleue for kubuntu);
with the 3D effect (and 3D icones) by default when the PC could,
with cairo-dock & with ubuntu tweak...
& with a theme like murrina-leopardish modified or
orange-linstablacplastic...
...i think it will be verry good.
What do you think about it ?
Sam7
2008/2/5, Kenneth Wimer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Hi
all,
We are slightly overdue for the next meeting. I suggest this Friday at
20:00
UTC. Is this too soon for anyone? Too early/late? Ideas?
Items for discussion are:
1) recent wallpaper submissions, testing by inclusion in the next
build, etc.
2) 2D icons: currently underway, I am leaning towards using the simple
2D
version for several reasons. Let's discuss this and find a way to move
forward.
3) Testing the clear looks theme, adding to next build.
...more to come
--
Kenneth
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