UI Discussion

[William Jon McCann]

Going to reply to this one only because it is convenient.  General
response to the activity today.

I'm going to try to say pretty much exactly the same thing that Owen
did... but in my way.

Here's the deal.  We see a bug - we fix a bug.  Often it is as simple
as that.  Here's a fictional reconstruction of more or less what
occurred with respect to the changes that have been discussed today.

Me: Matthias, I've finally had a chance to sit down and look closely
at what we're doing in our default panel configuration.  Holy crap -
it sucks.  We knew that of course.  And the Shell is going to fix some
of these bugs.  But here are a few changes that I think we can make in
the short term that make F12 look a bit more polished.  [I rattle off
a few things]
Matthias: Hey, those sound pretty reasonable.  And they shouldn't be
hard to fix.
[after not much time at all - in this case only a few hours I think]
Matthias: Hey what do you think of this?  [has everything done]
Me: Holy crap - you're a stud.  Looks much better!
Matthias: Cool.  I'll email the Fedora desktop community and push out
some packages.
Me: You rock.

Where did this conversation occur?  On IRC.  Why IRC?  Only because
we're too boring (to be fair, Matthias isn't boring - he has a family
- which is slightly different) to hang out in clubs and have chats at
the bar.  Could have occurred anywhere.  Did it make sense to poll the
community first?  No.  This was a small change that in our opinion
makes things better.  Does our opinion matter more than yours?  It
may...   Why?  Because this is in essence still a meritocracy and we
have trust relationships that may not be immediately evident to the
casual observer.  Does that mean that we don't listen to anyone?
Absolutely not.  Ideas some from many sources.  But at the end of the
day someone has to sift through them and pick out the ones that shine.

Sound good?  Want in the hot making a kick ass desktop action?  You
got it.  Here's how...

Grab one of us on IRC, IM, phone, train, email etc and make a case for
what you want to see.  Understand that this will be somewhat easier
once you've built up a reputation for being full of awesome.  But
mostly we need people with skill, vision, sanity, and positive energy
helping us make Fedora all that we know it can and will be.
Seriously, bring it.  You have great ideas?   Want to help form the
vision of the future of computing?  Show up, build trust, be awesome.
Now let's get back to work!

Jon


PS.  I've offered a fictionalized account of some of these
discussions.  Now you may wonder if it really goes down like that.
Well, here is an actual IRC transcript from today - the cabal exposed,
if you will:
<mccann> hey what is the "Compress" item in the nautilus context menu
supposed to do?
<mccann> "add to an archive"?
<mccann> hmm shouldn't offer that option on the Trash i guess
<mclasen> yeah, I believe it is 'create an archive with the contents
of this directory'
<mccann> yeah it is a pretty bad name
<mclasen> And the ubuntu guys failed to reach a conclusion what to
call it, I believe ?
<mccann> oh
<mccann> we should probably ditch the "stretch icon" option
<mccann> not even close to common enough to be there
<mclasen> thats an old eazel-era feature
<mclasen> from when nautilus was all about zooming in for more details
<mccann> yeah it is silly
* mclasen remembers fixing that up at some point
<mclasen> but I agree that it should probably go
<mccann> also Open with seems weird
<mccann> sometimes a submenu sometimes not
<mclasen> how would you do it otherwise ? Other... > ?
<mccann> oh i guess it shows a submenu if there are 3 or more options
<mccann> offering to compress Computer isn't right :)
<mclasen> yeah, something like that
<mccann> oh weird i can rename Computer too
<mccann> also "Make Link" is weird
<mccann> for two reasons
<mccann> it is a bit unclear what it really means
<mccann> also, when i do it, it creates the link overlapping the original
<mccann> Make Link makes it sound like I'm changing the original
<mccann> into a link
<mccann> i wonder who actually uses this
<mclasen> I agree that nautilus could use quite a bit of intuitiveness love
<mclasen> curious how the ubuntu papercuts seemed very obsessed with nautilus
<mclasen> without really touching those issues
<mccann> hmm, we offer creating launchers on the desktop...
<mccann> yeah i haven't seen any of these in the papercuts yet
<mccann> a little odd that the totem moz plugin has an about menu item
in the right click menu
<mccann> i was expecting it to tell me about the video