[indiana-discuss] [advocacy-discuss] General Branding Experience for Indiana

[Tim Foster]

Hi Glynn & co.

On Wed, 2007-09-12 at 22:22 +1200, Glynn Foster wrote:
> These are the locations I can think of off the top of my head - are there
> others? Can we think outside the box of an improved experience that we don't
> currently provide?
>Where?
> ======

here goes:

 * A "tip of the day" popup on login - how about a little firefox window
   with minimal decoration showing just after you login, displaying a
   custom web page with "next tip", "previous tip" links. Initially
   perhaps with a URL pointing to local content, in case the user hasn't
   got networking yet, but bonus points for detecting this on the fly
   and pointing to a web version if applicable.
 
   An added plus, we'd be pre-loading firefox, so users would see
   subsequent firefox windows pop up *really* quickly, albeit making
   the desktop a bit more sluggish to begin with..

 * Slightly related, an OpenSolaris side-bar page ?
http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox-tip/load-any-site-in-your-firefox-sidebar-294684.php
   we don't have an appropriate page at the moment, it'd need to be
   skinny to fit - perhaps a page with just useful OpenSolaris links
   or RSS headlines ?
   (complimenting http://www.opensolaris.org which could be the
    main Indiana firefox home page)

 * The GNOME Help page ( a fairly prominent link in the menu )

 * A shutdown splash screen - if we're showing stuff during startup,
   it's only polite to say "Goodbye" as well.

 * No idea if this is possible with Compiz (Erwann?) but a desktop
   background/app with semi-translucent RSS headlines from
   planet.opensolaris.org might make for some nice dynamic visuals
   along with the static desktop image. Again technically, I don't
   know if this is a runner.

 * Branded Rhythmbox visualisations - does the Rhythmbox visualisation
   plugin work yet (I admit to only having tried it on nv_69, which
   crashes) but something to display pretty pictures while playing
   music in the background *and* displaying an OpenSolaris logo could be
   a nice draw for OpenSolaris.org at conference booths and the like...



In terms of emphasising Indiana's alpha state, perhaps adding a few of
those crash-test-dummy yellow/black circles to any branding we have
would do ? 

http://images.google.com/images?q=crash+test+dummy
(or has that been done before?)

The trend seems to be to stamp "Alpha" or "Beta" onto your logo and let
users work it out - that seems like a bit of a cop out though...
http://ajax.phpmagazine.net/upload/2006/02/web20.jpg

and I quite liked some of the in-development gimp splash screens:
http://www.gimp.org/about/splash/

Hope this helps ?

	cheers,
			tim


> 
>  o GRUB Splash
>  o uname -a [!!?]
>  o Login Screen
>  o Login Splash (can we lose the icons/text?)
>  o Desktop Background
>  o Panel/menu setup
>  o Desktop icon/window/widget theme
>  o Firefox homepage
>  o Desktop icons
>  o Installer screens
>  o Screensaver
>  o Others?
> 
> When?
> =====
> With a preview release in Fall this year, it would be good at the very least to
> map out the various locations that we definitely want to brand, though the
> content will likely be very different (think 'Alpha' rather than a final
> product). We may want to set proper expectations for people trying it out this
> preview release and how the brand might effect that. Frank Ludolph has some
> thoughts on some of this, and I think he has done some initial work on putting
> some bits and pieces together that has addressed some of these ideas. Hopefully
> he will update us on it soon.
> 
> This might be a discussion that we could have at the OpenSolaris summit, and
> have a break-off working group. Cc'ing advocacy-discuss since it's likely to be
> a topic of interest, but setting the reply-to indiana-discuss where the
> conversation should continue.
> 
> 
> Thoughts, suggestions?
> 
> Glynn
> 
> [1] http://www.gnome.org/~gman/gui-install/screen9.png
> [2] file:///usr/share/doc/soldevex/html/developer_guide.html
> [3] http://www.opensolaris.org/os/newbies
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> advocacy-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy-discuss
-- 
Tim Foster, Sun Microsystems Inc, Solaris Engineering Ops
http://blogs.sun.com/timf