Some thoughts about xubuntu hardy

[Radomir Dopieralski]

Tue, Nov 06, 2007 at 05:05:44PM -0500: 
> Here is a mockup; it shows the way, I envision the visual appearance
> of our next release .
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Artwork/Gutsy/Incoming

There is no process list. Personally I'm doing perfectly fine navigating
using a large pager plugin, and maybe iconbox for minimized applications,
but I'm afraid users used to the windows/gnome/kde/icewm/default xubuntu
settings could be confused and pretty helpless. If you plan to have the
iconbox show all the aplications all the time, then think about resizing
the panel every time you start/close an application/window and how this
will affect slow computers. This needs testing on real users.

> Notice the themed panel. It is medium gray, from the usability point
> of view make more sense than using the contrasty white. It provides a
> more appropriate background for the application launchers.

Excuse me, but I'm getting chills down my spine when someone is talking
about "usability point of view" like this. Could you please explain how
medium gray panel makes more sense? How the background is more apropriate?
I always thought we are conditioned to read and watch pictures on white
background, mostly because the omnipresent books and other paper.

> As the ubuntu people said, Hardy would be all about polish and usability.

That's good, I'm Polish! :)
 
> 4) Take out the icon label backgrounds. They are distracting and are
> usability anomalies. And ugly too.

How? Can you explain this in more detail? I never noticed any problems
with them.

By the way, please don't take this as criticism, I think you are really
doing an excellent job and are improving from release to release
considerably. I hope to help at least by playing the devil's advocate.

-- 
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl>
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