Hello all,
I have for some time been hacking around with Kickoff, looking to improve it, and make it definitely more TDEish.
While it is not our default menu, we do provide it built in. Therefore I think it needs to be as good as it can get.
I also think it is of the utmost importance that we follow the TDE HCI model that Tim drew up. This means that some things in the current Kickoff layout are not good.
If you look at this link: http://imgur.com/h6xhB
I've drawn arrows and other things in reference to what I am explaining here, also I've drawn numbers so it's easy to compare.
1) The width of kickoff takes up much to much real estate, and wasted real estate. My estimate is that we can shave off a good 50-60 pixels off of it to reduce screen space with almost no sacrifice.
2) We need to remove the "search" text field. It does nothing, it is not helpful, it is not intuitive, it is just a waste of space. Remove it, and make the actual search area larger. To make it clear that it is a search bar, we can do like the regular KMenu search does and have grayed out letters saying "search..."
3) We also could either A. remove the search icon entirely or B. shrink it to stop wasting space. Also currently this is a mng file (basically a dead format that never took off). the animation doesn't work. hopefully I can just use a regular pixmap instead.
4) in line with the HCI model on the Etherpad, large buttons are bad. this is not a tablet, and tablet interfaces are not optimal. We can shrink the tabs a bit, (probably 8-10 pixels each) this fits in with 1) to reduce the width.
5) I say we remove this bottom bar entirely. KMenu does not have it. I do not think we need to know what user is and what host. I do not think it is worth the real estate. Also we definitely don't need a link to the website. If people want to go to our website, they will. They don't need a button on the main menu.
6) the kickoff logout dialog is this: "logout?" where as the KMenu shows up a nice dialog with options to hibernate etc. Either barrow this from KMenu or add options for each of these in the menu.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Does anyone actually use kickoff?
Calvin Morrison
Le Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:31 -0500, Calvin Morrison mutantturkey@gmail.com a écrit :
Thoughts? Suggestions? Does anyone actually use kickoff?
I basically agree; UIs like the default KDE4 desktop's which encourage large and imprecise movements are good only for trackballs (but with one it is really awesome :)), and UI which are to be used with a mouse/a touchpad should reduce pointer motion.
On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Calvin Morrison mutantturkey@gmail.comwrote:
Hello all,
I have for some time been hacking around with Kickoff, looking to improve it, and make it definitely more TDEish.
While it is not our default menu, we do provide it built in. Therefore I think it needs to be as good as it can get.
I also think it is of the utmost importance that we follow the TDE HCI model that Tim drew up. This means that some things in the current Kickoff layout are not good.
If you look at this link: http://imgur.com/h6xhB
I've drawn arrows and other things in reference to what I am explaining here, also I've drawn numbers so it's easy to compare.
- The width of kickoff takes up much to much real estate, and wasted
real estate. My estimate is that we can shave off a good 50-60 pixels off of it to reduce screen space with almost no sacrifice.
- We need to remove the "search" text field. It does nothing, it is
not helpful, it is not intuitive, it is just a waste of space. Remove it, and make the actual search area larger. To make it clear that it is a search bar, we can do like the regular KMenu search does and have grayed out letters saying "search..."
- We also could either A. remove the search icon entirely or B.
shrink it to stop wasting space. Also currently this is a mng file (basically a dead format that never took off). the animation doesn't work. hopefully I can just use a regular pixmap instead.
- in line with the HCI model on the Etherpad, large buttons are bad.
this is not a tablet, and tablet interfaces are not optimal. We can shrink the tabs a bit, (probably 8-10 pixels each) this fits in with
to reduce the width.
I say we remove this bottom bar entirely. KMenu does not have it. I
do not think we need to know what user is and what host. I do not think it is worth the real estate. Also we definitely don't need a link to the website. If people want to go to our website, they will. They don't need a button on the main menu.
- the kickoff logout dialog is this: "logout?" where as the KMenu
shows up a nice dialog with options to hibernate etc. Either barrow this from KMenu or add options for each of these in the menu.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Does anyone actually use kickoff?
Calvin Morrison
Hi Calvin,
Most definitely think these are all excellent proposals. Kickoff definitely needs some improvements, though it would be good to also brainstorm something for a better navigation on the app selection tab - as it is very slow to use currently.
Best regards, Tiago Marques
On 23 November 2011 19:58, Tiago Marques tiagomnm@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Calvin Morrison mutantturkey@gmail.comwrote:
Hello all,
I have for some time been hacking around with Kickoff, looking to improve it, and make it definitely more TDEish.
While it is not our default menu, we do provide it built in. Therefore I think it needs to be as good as it can get.
I also think it is of the utmost importance that we follow the TDE HCI model that Tim drew up. This means that some things in the current Kickoff layout are not good.
If you look at this link: http://imgur.com/h6xhB
I've drawn arrows and other things in reference to what I am explaining here, also I've drawn numbers so it's easy to compare.
- The width of kickoff takes up much to much real estate, and wasted
real estate. My estimate is that we can shave off a good 50-60 pixels off of it to reduce screen space with almost no sacrifice.
- We need to remove the "search" text field. It does nothing, it is
not helpful, it is not intuitive, it is just a waste of space. Remove it, and make the actual search area larger. To make it clear that it is a search bar, we can do like the regular KMenu search does and have grayed out letters saying "search..."
- We also could either A. remove the search icon entirely or B.
shrink it to stop wasting space. Also currently this is a mng file (basically a dead format that never took off). the animation doesn't work. hopefully I can just use a regular pixmap instead.
- in line with the HCI model on the Etherpad, large buttons are bad.
this is not a tablet, and tablet interfaces are not optimal. We can shrink the tabs a bit, (probably 8-10 pixels each) this fits in with
to reduce the width.
I say we remove this bottom bar entirely. KMenu does not have it. I
do not think we need to know what user is and what host. I do not think it is worth the real estate. Also we definitely don't need a link to the website. If people want to go to our website, they will. They don't need a button on the main menu.
- the kickoff logout dialog is this: "logout?" where as the KMenu
shows up a nice dialog with options to hibernate etc. Either barrow this from KMenu or add options for each of these in the menu.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Does anyone actually use kickoff?
Calvin Morrison
Hi Calvin,
Most definitely think these are all excellent proposals. Kickoff definitely needs some improvements, though it would be good to also brainstorm something for a better navigation on the app selection tab - as it is very slow to use currently.
Best regards, Tiago Marques
I would love some ideas regarding this. Do you have any suggestions regarding this?
Calvin
On Wednesday 23 November 2011, Calvin Morrison wrote:
On 23 November 2011 19:58, Tiago Marques tiagomnm@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Calvin Morrison mutantturkey@gmail.comwrote:
Hello all,
I have for some time been hacking around with Kickoff, looking to improve it, and make it definitely more TDEish.
While it is not our default menu, we do provide it built in. Therefore I think it needs to be as good as it can get.
I also think it is of the utmost importance that we follow the TDE HCI model that Tim drew up. This means that some things in the current Kickoff layout are not good.
If you look at this link: http://imgur.com/h6xhB
I've drawn arrows and other things in reference to what I am explaining here, also I've drawn numbers so it's easy to compare.
- The width of kickoff takes up much to much real estate, and wasted
real estate. My estimate is that we can shave off a good 50-60 pixels off of it to reduce screen space with almost no sacrifice.
- We need to remove the "search" text field. It does nothing, it is
not helpful, it is not intuitive, it is just a waste of space. Remove it, and make the actual search area larger. To make it clear that it is a search bar, we can do like the regular KMenu search does and have grayed out letters saying "search..."
- We also could either A. remove the search icon entirely or B.
shrink it to stop wasting space. Also currently this is a mng file (basically a dead format that never took off). the animation doesn't work. hopefully I can just use a regular pixmap instead.
- in line with the HCI model on the Etherpad, large buttons are bad.
this is not a tablet, and tablet interfaces are not optimal. We can shrink the tabs a bit, (probably 8-10 pixels each) this fits in with
to reduce the width.
I say we remove this bottom bar entirely. KMenu does not have it. I
do not think we need to know what user is and what host. I do not think it is worth the real estate. Also we definitely don't need a link to the website. If people want to go to our website, they will. They don't need a button on the main menu.
- the kickoff logout dialog is this: "logout?" where as the KMenu
shows up a nice dialog with options to hibernate etc. Either barrow this from KMenu or add options for each of these in the menu.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Does anyone actually use kickoff?
Calvin Morrison
Hi Calvin,
Most definitely think these are all excellent proposals. Kickoff definitely needs some improvements, though it would be good to also brainstorm something for a better navigation on the app selection tab - as it is very slow to use currently.
Best regards, Tiago Marques
I would love some ideas regarding this. Do you have any suggestions regarding this?
Calvin
Hi Calvin,
While I don't like (or use) Kickoff myself, if we must have it ;-) I think that all of your suggestions for improving it are good ones. I would also like to add a couple of my own.
Since I have never seen the point of having 'favourites' in the menu (it is quicker to click on desktop icons or icons on Kicker) I would like to have the option to not display the favourites tab. The same goes for the history tab (I assume that 'history' means recently used documents).
I think that the search field should look and behave the same as any other search fields in Trinity, like (for example) the one in Konqueror.
That's it for now. Thanks for your efforts.
Richard.
I think that it may be better to have a split view where the previous options are shown when you are in the sub menu. So that way it is possible to go from the Internet category to Graphics with a single click, instead of having to click back. The whole back button there is a very bad idea IMHO. Since there is plenty of screen real estate on that particular Kickoff functionality, this seems feasible to implement.
Thoughts?
Best regards, Tiago
On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 1:03 AM, Calvin Morrison mutantturkey@gmail.comwrote:
On 23 November 2011 19:58, Tiago Marques tiagomnm@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Calvin Morrison mutantturkey@gmail.comwrote:
Hello all,
I have for some time been hacking around with Kickoff, looking to improve it, and make it definitely more TDEish.
While it is not our default menu, we do provide it built in. Therefore I think it needs to be as good as it can get.
I also think it is of the utmost importance that we follow the TDE HCI model that Tim drew up. This means that some things in the current Kickoff layout are not good.
If you look at this link: http://imgur.com/h6xhB
I've drawn arrows and other things in reference to what I am explaining here, also I've drawn numbers so it's easy to compare.
- The width of kickoff takes up much to much real estate, and wasted
real estate. My estimate is that we can shave off a good 50-60 pixels off of it to reduce screen space with almost no sacrifice.
- We need to remove the "search" text field. It does nothing, it is
not helpful, it is not intuitive, it is just a waste of space. Remove it, and make the actual search area larger. To make it clear that it is a search bar, we can do like the regular KMenu search does and have grayed out letters saying "search..."
- We also could either A. remove the search icon entirely or B.
shrink it to stop wasting space. Also currently this is a mng file (basically a dead format that never took off). the animation doesn't work. hopefully I can just use a regular pixmap instead.
- in line with the HCI model on the Etherpad, large buttons are bad.
this is not a tablet, and tablet interfaces are not optimal. We can shrink the tabs a bit, (probably 8-10 pixels each) this fits in with
to reduce the width.
I say we remove this bottom bar entirely. KMenu does not have it. I
do not think we need to know what user is and what host. I do not think it is worth the real estate. Also we definitely don't need a link to the website. If people want to go to our website, they will. They don't need a button on the main menu.
- the kickoff logout dialog is this: "logout?" where as the KMenu
shows up a nice dialog with options to hibernate etc. Either barrow this from KMenu or add options for each of these in the menu.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Does anyone actually use kickoff?
Calvin Morrison
Hi Calvin,
Most definitely think these are all excellent proposals. Kickoff definitely needs some improvements, though it would be good to also brainstorm something for a better navigation on the app selection tab - as it is very slow to use currently.
Best regards, Tiago Marques
I would love some ideas regarding this. Do you have any suggestions regarding this?
Calvin
On Friday 25 November 2011 21:29:07 Tiago Marques wrote:
I think that it may be better to have a split view where the previous options are shown when you are in the sub menu. So that way it is possible to go from the Internet category to Graphics with a single click, instead of having to click back. The whole back button there is a very bad idea IMHO. Since there is plenty of screen real estate on that particular Kickoff functionality, this seems feasible to implement.
Thoughts?
Agree, I hate kickoff because of this back button.
Best regards, Tiago
On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 14:32, Serghei Amelian serghei@thel.ro wrote:
On Friday 25 November 2011 21:29:07 Tiago Marques wrote:
I think that it may be better to have a split view where the previous options are shown when you are in the sub menu. So that way it is possible to go from the Internet category to Graphics with a single click, instead of having to click back. The whole back button there is a very bad idea IMHO. Since there is plenty of screen real estate on that particular Kickoff functionality, this seems feasible to implement.
Thoughts?
Agree, I hate kickoff because of this back button.
The kickoff button was always a source of controversy, and always will be :P Here are my two cents:
- Get rid of the search at the top or make it use a new backend; IIRC it uses beagle which is now old and depreciated. - Change the back button to something else - you could use a breadcrumb like KDE 4, or just have an option at the top to go back, or... whatever is feasible? >_> - Change the Powered by TDE with the logout button. So much easier. :P
On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 16:10, Serghei Amelian serghei@thel.ro wrote:
On Friday 25 November 2011 23:04:22 Robert Xu wrote:
- Change the Powered by TDE with the logout button. So much easier. :P
Actually Logout / Sleep / Hibernate
...leave button? :P not sure how you would name it, but... one button is good.
On Friday 25 November 2011 23:13:02 Robert Xu wrote:
On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 16:10, Serghei Amelian serghei@thel.ro wrote:
On Friday 25 November 2011 23:04:22 Robert Xu wrote:
- Change the Powered by TDE with the logout button. So much easier. :P
Actually Logout / Sleep / Hibernate
...leave button? :P not sure how you would name it, but... one button is good.
Suspend/Hibernate is actually a freeze of system, not leaving or logout something.
On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 16:17, Serghei Amelian serghei@thel.ro wrote:
Suspend/Hibernate is actually a freeze of system, not leaving or logout something.
Hm, we'd need to work that out then >_>
We On Nov 25, 2011 4:21 PM, "Robert Xu" robxu9@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 16:17, Serghei Amelian serghei@thel.ro wrote:
Suspend/Hibernate is actually a freeze of system, not leaving or logout something.
Hm, we'd need to work that out then >_>
-- later daze. :: Robert Xu :: rxu.lincomlinux.org :: protocol.by/rxu
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Thank you for all of your input.
The back button is not an option as it is integral to the design. I don't see a way to deal with that.
I think we should remove the leave tab and replace the powered by tde button
Did I miss anything?
Calvin
-
/dev/ammo42 -
Calvin Morrison -
Richard J.M. Hill -
Robert Xu -
Serghei Amelian -
Tiago Marques