|  Author | Topic: Lets talk 2.0 (Read 2,489 times) |
Anthony Nordquist
Administrator
member is offline
![[homepage]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/www_sm.png "[homepage]")
Joined: Dec 2010
Gender: Male 
Posts: 1,336
|  | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #15 on Jan 16, 2012, 3:48am » | |
The bottom panel will be auto hidden by default just like in 1.x, I am just playing in my sandbox at the moment. So in reality only the top panel is taking up space 99.99% of the time. You can always move the panels to the side, it wouldn't be very difficult. This is above the capabilities of simple theming and will have to be done by the user.
Eventually I will change the terminal and desktop icons to match the default desktop background as I did in 1.x. That is in fact the desktop background I intend to use, unless someone has a better suggestion. I quite like this one and it is fitting in very well with the theming.
I am using Mousepad to edit the theme and GIMP to lookup the proper color codes I want to use.
As for the terminal, in 1.x I had transparency set to 0.65, looking at it now I will probably use 0.85 for 2.0. It looks better with this theme setup and should be easier to read, but you don't need to take my word on it. Have a picture 
![[image]](http://i.imgur.com/brsvX.jpg "[image]")
| |
|
petrek
Senior Member
member is offline
![[avatar]](http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/3784/avatarebm.jpg "[avatar]")
Joined: Aug 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 386
Location: Poland
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #16 on Jan 16, 2012, 6:26am » | |
I was thinking about some script that could do that change, novice user will have some troubles with setting this. I like this background, I wonder how it will look like with high contrast icons. I prefer them, since they are easy to be seen even by bad eyes, and making them is quite simple. As for terminal, I was thinking about using some editors, browsers, they sometimes use more colours, and then some things are becoming unreadable.
|
Skallagrigg |
|
ukbrian
Senior Member
member is offline
Joined: Aug 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 284
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #17 on Jan 16, 2012, 10:39am » | |
Quote:| Midori has speed dial support in Debian Wheezy |
|
Unfortunately the speed dial in Midori is a single page like all the other speed dials in other browsers, Josep Del Rio's Firefox's Speed Dial is a different beast, he's taken the idea and really developed it into a multi tabbed app, it has no equal/competitor, it makes bookmarks/favorites very old school. It will launch scripts or plugins not just url's. I thought/might have posted this yesterday 136 MB 7z http://lin.me.uk/temp/sd-Project-06.mp4.7z. I strongly recommend you to use firefox and develop a custom SalineOS based firefox profile instead of just using an empty default profile, I will put a basic one together so you can further develop it or ditch it but please consider it.
I've only changed my work habits twice since 2000, once was "Stardock Fences the windows desktop panel thingy, the other was Josep Del Rio's Speed Dial
Quote:| Firefox is actually a fairly complex beast when you start looking under the hood |
|
I understand it has got to over 4 GB again and the compiler can only manage 4 GB, it might halt these silly 6 week "major" version upgrades for a time.
Quote:| I have considered writing/forking off one of the installers that use Webkit for a GUI |
|
I didn't realize that webkit was used for GUI's, I thought it was just browsers that used it.
Quote:| I like having the installer ask exactly one thing at a time, I think it helps lessen confusion. |
|
I can only answer with a video of the dream installer, one screen before the install and another on first boot to set the username and, passwords, there might have been one more when you boot, I've only installed it twice.
I'm assuming all installers need the same data off an end user to install, splitting into two forms seems good to me but your the Skipper. 7z file 104 MB http://lin.me.uk/dream/videos/dream-02-Project-00.mp4.7z
Quote:| and people with bad vision |
|
I think this is very important also to make it very easy for a user to change the language/keyboard perhaps using country flags would help a non english speaking person
Quote:| Ideally the desktop is something you see when you boot the machine, and never have to look for any reason while the machine is running |
|
Not sure I want to lose my desktop, I normally have several apps running at once but not full screen, sounds like the way shell does things. I only use one workspace.
Quote:| It is just expected behavior and going against that without really good reason is usually bad |
|
Agreed, I hated it when windows came out with the taskbar(panel) on the bottom after all the major DOS software developers had recently developed top line drop down menus because the end users liked them, a very retrograde move and it amazes me that some distros still put the panel at the bottom where the small print on a page goes that you want over looked.
Quote:| I have modified my starting post |
|
I couldn't see the changes sorry, perhaps an edit by the changes.
Love your new desktop, excellent work
Quote:| Looks better than before. But panels on top and bottom are not good for small 16:9 screens |
|
I always remove it, I suppose I replace it with drop down menus on the top panel, I think a side panel might be better and I'd put it on the right where the scroll bars are if you use one, I think the standard xfce multi item drop down launchers are better. I only used custom menus because I didn't know where the definition file for the launchers was kept and I wanted to easily install in a new distro without having to keep creating a new launcher every time. I still don't know where the launcher definition files are kept, they're not at /etc/xdg/menus as I would expect.
My pens running out of ink so I'd better stop writing. 
PS
I noticed when I replayed the video that the changes I made to the live cd got installed and I think on the first boot the install icon had gone from the desktop but the manual was still there but after the final reboot the manual icon was gone as well.
| |
|
Anthony Nordquist
Administrator
member is offline
Joined: Dec 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,336
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #18 on Jan 16, 2012, 11:25am » | |
The panel configuration settings are stored in $HOME/.config/xfce4/panel
Webkit is actually quite the powerful tool, it can almost be considered a full framework these days. To put it in perspective, Yahoo messenger renders IM conversations through webkit. The web and the desktop are going to continue blending together, and more things are going to be done through web technologies. I see this as a very good thing as web technologies are for the most part open source and standardized. It is not only webkit that really has that power, xul-runner can do quite a bit as well. I intend to use Midori's built in web app functionality to help bridge the gap between the desktop and web, so Firefox is really unlikely to make the default browser at this point. I won't rule out a custom profile and trailing upstream releases though, it really depends on how much work it is going to be. SalineOS is still mostly a one man operation working with what spare time I have. Honorable mentions to Richard for his work on the User Manual and everyone in the community who have given input, as input is like publicity good or bad it is always good.
I have just downloaded your video but haven't watched it yet, I will give it a look later. The good news is I will be dropping at least a couple of dialogs since the installer won't be setting a root password.
| |
|
beardedragon
Global Moderator
member is offline
![[avatar]](http://smile-media-production-1.s3.amazonaws.com/images/83a50d70550b01307b5322000afe0a5a/168x168.jpg "[avatar]")
Joined: Feb 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 857
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #19 on Jan 16, 2012, 11:29am » | |
By the time you get to 2.0, Wheezy will have xfce 4.8 ironed out, which already has invisible backgrounds available. Then you can just drag your Panel by the handles. I still get crashes with Exaile, Rhythmbox does not have an Equalizer, which is why I suggested Banshee, Mono does not take up so much space on my computer that I notice. Many other good suggestions here and I like the new themes. Have not tried Midori, prefer Iceweasel over Firefox.
|
Robert Collard, Madison, WI
HP s5710f, 2x AMD Athlon II 260@3.2Ghz 3GB RAM, 640GB HD
Debian 7.0 XFCE-4.10 3.2.0-4-amd64
If you are satisfied with the results, please Edit your first post and add [Solved] to the Subject line. |
|
Anthony Nordquist
Administrator
member is offline
Joined: Dec 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,336
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #20 on Jan 16, 2012, 11:43am » | |
I don't worry about the disk space with mono I worry about the runtime resources, as I do with every other app. Loading the mono runtime into RAM for one application is just not what I would ideally be doing. My job is to determine if everything that is eating resources is worth what they are using, or should I be using something else. This is how I look at all the applications provided. Right now I am leaning towards Exaile as I haven't had any problems at all with the version in Wheezy and it has all the functionality I feel is important. Listen gets a notable mention as being quite good, but it loads so very slowly in my virtual machine. This leads me to believe that it will load horribly slow on older machines (I purposely neuter my VM, helps me trim things down).
Edited for content.
| |
|
ukbrian
Senior Member
member is offline
Joined: Aug 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 284
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #21 on Jan 16, 2012, 2:56pm » | |
Quote:| Webkit is actually quite the powerful tool |
|
That was news to me, thank you for sharing your knowledge. That might be the reason mozilla are taking steps in that di
Quote:| Firefox is really unlikely to make the default browser at this point. I won't rule out a custom profile and trailing upstream releases though, it really depends on how much work it is going to be. SalineOS is still mostly a one man operation working with what spare time I have |
|
Not a big deal perhaps some of my suggestions might be more for wheezy.
Quote:| Have not tried Midori, prefer Iceweasel over Firefox. |
|
I used iceweasel most of last year when firefox went mad with new versions. I only tried midori to fit on the qt4-fsarchiver cd and it was quite small in size compared to other browsers. With mozilla bringing out a webkit based browser the speed dial developer might have a rethink about developing a webkit based speed dial, i'll get in touch with him again as he did adopt some of my suggestions for speed dial and he's a really nice guy.
Quote:| Right now I am leaning towards Exaile |
|
Have you tried DeaDBeeF, I just point a music player at my music folder and tell it to play random, so i don't really do much, it's just a young developing app.
I'm doing a fresh install of Pure SalineOS on my other machine now, I want to start from scratch again now I know what to put on it and it looks like DreamLinux is going to be my video editing OS, I've not tried to snapshot it yet but i can take the drive it's on and slide it in my other machine and it runs perfectly.
You're doing a wonderful job Anthony and Team, I'm in your debt, if I can help in any way please don't hesitate to ask.
| |
|
Richard
Elder Member
member is offline
![[avatar]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10332409/bender.gif "[avatar]")
Joined: Jan 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 586
Location: Venezuela
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #22 on Jan 16, 2012, 5:08pm » | |
@Anthony,
LibreOffice just released v3.4.5 which is a well-debugged stable version.
Probably the best choice of the current releases.
I expect to stay with it for a while.
|
SalineOS-1.7, Xfce4.6.2, w/ 3.2.0-0.bpo.4-686-pae;
SalineOS-2.0, Xfce4.8, w/ 3.2.0-4-686-pae
Fedora-18, Xfce4.10, w/ 3.8.x
|
|
Anthony Nordquist
Administrator
member is offline
Joined: Dec 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,336
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #23 on Jan 17, 2012, 9:50am » | |
As of right now 3.4.4 is in Wheezy, hopefully 3.4.5 makes its way back to Wheezy and gets backported to Squeeze shortly thereafter.
Since everyone likes pictures, I shall let you feast your eyes on the finished product of my random hacking on themes/icons.
Salty-Ice GTK theme and updated SalineTango icon theme:
![[image]](http://i.imgur.com/XZkW0.png "[image]")
| |
|
petrek
Senior Member
member is offline
Joined: Aug 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 386
Location: Poland
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #24 on Jan 17, 2012, 10:33am » | |
<petrek is looking at the picture with fisted eyes, thinking that he needs better glasses or bigger fonts, maybe even both> I'll never thought that I'll say that, but this black colour doesn't seem to fit here, maybe very dark blue will be better? Eh, but don't worry about me, being negative is my hobby 
|
Skallagrigg |
|
Anthony Nordquist
Administrator
member is offline
Joined: Dec 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,336
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #25 on Jan 17, 2012, 11:23am » | |
Well the screenshot is rather low resolution, seeing as it is taken from a Virtual Box window. You can expect it to be easier to read when run full screen and in your PCs native resolution. I don't intend to up the size of the font, I already use a larger default font than any Linux distribution I have personally used. It is fairly easy to up the font yourself though, just launch the Xfce4-Settings-Manager > Appearance > Font tab.
Going with dark blue seems counter productive if the goal of switching to a light theme was to maximize contrast, dark blue would blend into the background. The black don't really stick out too badly, the whole theme uses only 3 colors and they are pretty evenly distributed.
I hate to break it to you friend, but you very likely do need stronger prescription glasses.
| |
|
Richard
Elder Member
member is offline
Joined: Jan 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 586
Location: Venezuela
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #26 on Jan 17, 2012, 12:25pm » | |
Color combinations are sometimes rendered diferently by different hardwares.
Just keep coming up with new ideas.
You, too, Petrek. I know you have some ideas, so let's get them all on the table while we're in the planning stage.
|
SalineOS-1.7, Xfce4.6.2, w/ 3.2.0-0.bpo.4-686-pae;
SalineOS-2.0, Xfce4.8, w/ 3.2.0-4-686-pae
Fedora-18, Xfce4.10, w/ 3.8.x
|
|
petrek
Senior Member
member is offline
Joined: Aug 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 386
Location: Poland
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #27 on Jan 18, 2012, 3:00am » | |
A little misunderstanding here, I was talking about my browser fonts, although I do need a new glasses, since my dog tried to eat my old ones I have problem with SalineOS forum, it's spreading too much to the left and right, so to see the whole post I must set very small fonts. Connecting this with my screen 148 DPI 1280x720 resolution everything is becoming an eye killer. As for ideas, it's hard to come up with something, if you don't see how exactly everything looks now I played a little with wheezy and all I can say, I don't like xfce taskmanager, it shows memory usage only in percents  Oh, after installation it would be good to have some language switcher, now I can't find one I have more ideas but regarding forum, so it'll be too offtopic here (if needed I can implement them by myself).
|
Skallagrigg |
|
Anthony Nordquist
Administrator
member is offline
Joined: Dec 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,336
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #28 on Jan 18, 2012, 3:38am » | |
You can change the system language by issuing the following command in a terminal: gksu /usr/bin/localizesys
You will recognize the dialogs from the installer, that reminds me a menu entry under system or settings should probably be included for localizesys.
Midori actually has pretty extensive options for configuring the fonts it uses when rendering pages, the one thing it lacks is setting the font to bold. Chromium appears to be rather useless in this regard, and Firefox/Iceweasel uses the system font.
| |
|
ukbrian
Senior Member
member is offline
Joined: Aug 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 284
| | Re: Lets talk 2.0
« Reply #29 on Jan 18, 2012, 10:22am » | |
I like the panel but hate the widows titlebar, it draws my eye to it perhaps because white on black is the maximum contrast possible, to my mind it's the data displayed in the window that's important not the titlebar!, the titlebar should merge into the background not try to gain your attention, eye focus.
I've noticed that those that post screen shots of their desktops invariably use dark colours with no apps displayed, a desktop is just a vehicle to display your apps/data not an art project to drool over, the only part of a desktop i would want to be noticeable and perhaps draw your attention are the menus.
Icons are a very different matter, I think they are very important and it's not necessary to use the apps own icons. I like thunar's hammer, it's very distinctive and easily remembered. Skype, Cherrytree, Geany, Audacity and Filezilla are others that are memorable but maybe that's because i'm a non artistic belt and braces man with no taste.
Because thunar's right click drop down menu doesn't stay open when clicked with some of the themes I tend to immediately select Crux and stick with that, it's got darkish titlebars but it doesn't draw my eye to it.
Perhaps 2 launchers on the desktop of the installer would be useful, one to change the language/keyboard, the other to change the theme, I think that the option for changing the language should not be buried in an english language menu for not english speaking users but i might be wrong being an english speaking person. How difficult is it for a non-english speaking person to go into the menu to change the language? and can country flags/icons be used to make it easier.
Some of the installers about now incorporate any changes you make while using the live CD into the install which is what you want if the language, keyboard or theme are changed by the user.
Quote:| I like having the installer ask exactly one thing at a time, I think it helps lessen confusion. |
|
I beg to disagree Filling in one screen where the end user can see what information they need to fill in or have filled in is so much less confusing, rather than a multitude of screens flashing on and off and then end up with one large screen with all the info you have entered, to have one static screen, just the last one, is heaven, perhaps some other devs/users have a view on this as i consider it quite important and i do realize I'm talking about more coding for you but this is about version 1.6 and 2.0 and 2.0 might have a rewritten installer.
Quote:| The panel configuration settings are stored in $HOME/.config/xfce4/panel |
|
I've just done a fresh install of Pure SalineOS and I'll start playing with that folder, i'm curious whether if i customize my top panel I can then just paste it into a fresh install which would make the standard right click drop down menus a lot more useful, I did begrudge the time it took to create a launcher menu on every fresh install and that's why i got into the custom menus but there were also advantages in creating them in a self contained folder that didn't interfere in any way with the main menu itself.
I think perhaps your scripts should use a separate menu rather than bloating even more an already overfilled standard menu.
Dreamlinux have used a custom menu in an attempt to make it more usable for an end user but unfortunately I have added a few apps that never appear in the main menu!
Everything I try to do is aimed at making life easier, more intuitive for a child or newcomer to computing and most of the new users I set up machines for with a firefox, speed dial menu never use the standard menu and rarely see their desktops.
It's very interesting when I'm giving remote support where the novice is sharing their screen with me on skype and i ask them to go to the main menu the look of panic on their faces and this happens with most of them, too many choices, too much writing to take in i think, the custom menu's help enormously with this problem, "click on the hammer breaking eggs, then click on the cherries", so much easier to talk them through something with distinctive icons.
You lucky folk, my pens running out again, time for forty winks not like Sunday when I slept from 11:00 AM until 05:30 Monday morning, that's real sleeping 16 hours at a time.
![[image]](http://smilies.lin.me.uk/pics/hamock-02.jpeg "[image]")
Edit
Quote:| The web and the desktop are going to continue blending together, and more things are going to be done through web technologies. I see this as a very good thing as web technologies are for the most part open source and standardized. It is not only webkit that really has that power, xul-runner can do quite a bit as well. I intend to use Midori's built in web app functionality to help bridge the gap between the desktop and web, |
|
Trying to get my head around this, does this mean that if Firefox's Speed Dial was rewritten for Midori that the code could also be used in a webkit desktop panel as a menuing system?
| |
| |
|
![[Home]](http://images.proboards.com/new/menu/home.png "[Home]")
![[New Topics]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/topics.png "[New Topics]")
![[Help]](http://images.proboards.com/new/menu/help.png "[Help]")
![[Search]](http://images.proboards.com/new/menu/search.png "[Search]")
![[Login]](http://images.proboards.com/new/menu/login.png "[Login]")
![[Register]](http://images.proboards.com/new/menu/register.png "[Register]")
![[Search This Thread]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/search2.png "[Search This Thread]")
![[Share Topic]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/share.png "[Share Topic]")
![[Print]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/print.png "[Print]")
Logged