[ubuntu-art] RFC: Ubuntu 6.06 Improvement Review

[Michiel Sikma]

Frank Schoep wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I'm having trouble finding time to do Ubuntu related things lately due to 
> overtime, but I've managed to put in some hours over the past two weeks. I've 
> got a lot of ideas and suggestions I want to vent but I'm going to have to 
> find a lot more time before I can present them in a professional way.
> 
> These past two weeks I started working on a document that is now temporarily 
> called "Ubuntu 6.06 Improvement Review".
> 
> My initial goal was to make a statement that "artwork is more than a GTK theme 
> and a bootsplash image". I've tried to combine artwork, consistency and 
> usability into a single review of the operating system. All points of 
> improvement can be used as a checklist for Edgy, to see where we need to 
> invest time and refine things.
> 
> In the little time I had, I managed to review the boot-up screen, local login 
> and remote login. You can download a work-in-progress PDF at this TinyURL:
> http://tinyurl.com/s4crn
> 
> A direct link (spanning lines, with spaces in the filename):
> http://www.ffnn.nl/media/external/ubuntu/dapperimprovement/Ubuntu 6.06 
> Improvement Review.pdf
> 
> I'm asking for criticism and comments, along with the question of it being 
> worth continuing this effort.
> 
> It is unfortunate that I didn't want to deviate from the chronological order 
> while writing the review, because reviewing all default applications is going 
> to be tremendously interesting and will result in a list of inconsistencies 
> amongst the bundled applications.
> 
> Having this list would then make it possible to make Ubuntu feel less like a 
> bunch of applications thrown together to put it in a harsh way. For instance, 
> something I've been involved with is creating a Human theme for Firefox, 
> because it brings its own incompatible icons and colors by default. This is a 
> case where artwork and the concept of a "desktop theme" crosses the GTK  
> boundary.
> 
> I'm looking forward to receiving your comments. Keep in mind that the document 
> isn't intended for public release yet, isn't finished and the page layout 
> hasn't got any love yet, but it's the best I can show you right now.
> 
> Thanks for reading.
> 
> With kind regards,
> 
> Frank Schoep
> 

Thanks for your review!

I've read through your review and find that you have great ideas about 
graphic design and usability. You know what you're talking about. I 
agree with a lot of your points, but also disagree with some of them. 
I'm kind of busy with all kinds of things, however, so I won't respond 
to them here, but I would like to request that maybe the data from that 
PDF is moved into the wiki; it might be really useful to be able to 
quickly look up your data later, and this would also make it easy to 
respond to your criticism.

I hope to see more of this review soon.

Michiel