[indiana-discuss] [desktop-discuss] 2008.11 UI Spec

[Calum Benson]

On 12 Aug 2008, at 23:02, Glynn Foster wrote:

>
> On 13/08/2008, at 9:57 AM, Brian Cameron wrote:
>>
>> I thought that the plan was that we would need to not include many  
>> new
>> applications in the menus in Nevada.  At least that's what Calum  
>> Benson
>> seemed to be suggesting.  To avoid a cluttered appearance.
>
> I don't understand this logic personally. The idea of hiding menus  
> entries in Nevada is only going to cause users who continue to use  
> it pain.

Not half as much pain as using an Applications menu loaded with dozens  
of non-core applications of varying quality and accessibility,  
duplicate functionality, non-obvious names etc...

For better or for worse, I still consider the Nevada desktop to be the  
closest thing we currently have to the next Solaris desktop.  IMHO  
this means choosing the default menu contents and layout as carefully  
as ever (and certainly more carefully than JDS3), not using it as a  
dumping ground for every app that we ever feel like shipping :)

> I think there's definitely a potential need for a Nevada desktop UI  
> spec, especially since the branding is currently different there  
> (though there may be plans to use the same on both?)

There is already a Nevada UI desktop spec, although it's a bit out of  
date currently:
<http://opensolaris.org/os/community/desktop/uispecs/nevada-uispec/>

I intend to focus on the Nevada UI spec again once the 2008.11 UI spec  
is frozen, because as you suggest, there probably ought to be more  
convergence between the two than there is now.  (But we certainly need  
to figure out with marketing/branding where it makes sense to keep  
them different.)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum.benson at sun.com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems