Areas to Work On

More generally, this page : http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html is filled with good ideas to enhance Gnome that would not take a lot of time (for a big part of them at least) to be implemented, even if it is not related to a document centric-desktop.

The way Mac lets you choose files : http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/issues/detail?id=24

It's great to simulate the mac interface but I suppose your main goal is a document centric user interface. What do you think of these suggestions that go further towards this goal?

• Windows are classed as documents/browsers/conversations/tool-boxes/other
• documents - more exactly, a view on a document, e.g. a drawing in inkscape, a folder in spatial nautilus, an e-mail
• browsers - a view into a big world. There are many documents available and they could be navigated with hyperlinks and history back/forward, e.g. a web browser, file browser, the f-spot photo browser, the folder listing view of an e-mail client, RSS feed reader, the terminal perhaps.
• conversations - a live conversation between 2 or more people. (I'm not sure if it's necessary to distinguish between a this and a document.) e.g. a IM/IRC chat window.
• tool-boxes - a palette of tools for the user to modify his document. e.g. the GIMP tool boxes.
• other - things which are useful but do not fit into the above categories, e.g. calculator, sudoku, emacs :-)

• Task list applet becomes a document list applet
• each document has an icon/button in the list. Multiple views on a document are grouped in one icon/button.
• each conversation has an icon/button in the list.
• each browser window has an icon/button in the list
• tool-boxes do not have an icon/button in the list. They are brought to the front when their document gets focus.
• other windows have an icon/button in the list.
• The task list applet might look like the normal gnome task list, or like an fancy icon dock, or something completely different.
• It should still be easy to move document windows between workspaces.
• Toolbars are often used as shortcuts to common menu operations. There should also be a global toolbar that sits near the global menu bar. It would contain buttons such as "Compose e-mail", "Print", "Spell check", "Cut/Copy/Paste".
• Nothing should be in the toolbar which isn't in the menu because a toolbar might be difficult to operate without a mouse.
• Windows will have less bulky toolbars. This is important if each document has its own window.
• e.g. abiword's document formatting toolbars should be put into tool-boxes.
• however it is still helpful for browsers to have their own toolbars for back, forward, refresh, zoom, etc.
• File management. It may not be necessary to have a "File" menu.
• "New document" can be supplied by the main menu.
• "Open" is supplied by a browser window.
• "Save"
• If there exists automatic saving to a version controlled file, then "Save" is not necessary;
• otherwise, if the user must save files himself, then "Save" must go somewhere. My preference is for a save button on the window frame.
• There should be no such thing as going to a menu and starting the "Abiword" app, or starting the "Evince" app. There should be "New Abiword Document", or from a browser, open this document or PDF.
• Tool-boxes are presented to the user when their relevant document gets focus. This happens in the same way that a different menu appears when its document gets focus.
• The position of tool-boxes is remembered by the window manager. If possible they are initially placed where they would not obscure the document.
• It should be easy to hide/show tool-boxes.
• Tool boxes could be docked to the edge of the screen, in the panel.
• Tabs can be provided by the window manager. It is a useful feature for all browsers and each app should need to implement its own tabs.
• Common UI elements should be merged into one place if it makes sense. You have already done this with the menu bar. The Mathusalem project has made a start at making a framework for common UI for long operations (e.g. file transfer).
• I'm undecided whether a common status bar is a good idea. The opposite (each window with its own mode line/status area) works quite well in emacs.
• It should be possible to bookmark any position inside any browser/document. All bookmarks can be viewed/searched together.

Please note I came up with this list of suggestions (among others not written here) by doing a survey of free software desktops/apps (GNOME, XFCE, Fluxbox, Sugar, The Gimp, emacs, Blender, deskbar applet). They are hardly original. Nothing suggested hasn't been implemented before by free software. However, no-one has put it all together yet.

I realise these suggestions probably involve changes to each GNOME app, creating new APIs and frameworks, modifying other specs, enhancing the window manager, etc. In short, a lot of work. Also there are politics involved in making drastic changes to the UI. For instance, I believe the switch to spatial nautilus caused some arguments. It is possible to split this list into multiple projects.

I am interested in coding and writing reports/designs to help with this. And I'm interested in your opinions.

rodney, this page was written by pierre. I'll try to notify him about your opinions (in case he don't see it).

My comments. I agree with your opinion. Free Software desktop need to improve.

Today I received a new thinkpad computer with Vista preloaded. I explored the operating system a little. What I can conclude is that Windows really has improved a lot since XP to Vista(the UI).

For my personal experience, XP is worse than GNOME. But Vista just seems more easy to use than GNOME. If I didn't change into a believer of Free Software, I would definitely change to Vista.

However, this project has not yet established any relation with GNOME people. (I don't know how to find them. Nobody response my mail in their maillist). Even I strongly apprieciate your work, I don't think I can help a lot to advocate your suggestions.

If there's a chance I'll also be happy to work for a better FreeSoftware? Desktop in a broader way.

BTW: GNOME has many users and improving it is much better than forking a new one. Look at GNUStep as an example. It is ideal, but few people use it.

Rainwoodman, still didn't have time to read it in details, but can you list the pros of Windows Vista, so that we can add it the improvements page.

We should call this project : a bag of tiny improvements to Gnome. :-) We'll have them merged sooner or later. The quality of the code is anyway improving. So it doesn't matter when.

The menu-like toolbar of Vista's nautilus leaves me a deep impression. The document-like control center is also nice. The very smooth fade in and fade out effect for mapping an unmapping windows is also pretty.

But among all, vista's smooth colors looks very comfortable. As a contrary, a default setup of Fedora only uses about 64 colors. (The screenshot on the project home page was educed to 64 colors, without any notable quality loss).

After I played it for a few hours I get bored anyway.

Though every design is exciting, there lacks a consistent UI idea: for Explorer/Iexpolorer, there is no menubar, but a menu-like toolbar, for Media player, there is no menubar, but a toolbar-like toolbar, for Games(digging the mines), there is a menubar, no toolbar. Office suite has a weird thing, neither a menubar nor a toolbar.

Most programs that are not distributed by Microsoft cannot fit into the new theme very well, eg the display driver's setting program.

However, obviously they are trying to reduce the usage of the menubar, at most cases.