[design] Re: Re: [sugar] First time Sugar user's experiences

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

Eben Eliason wrote:
>> This is the Frame, which allows access to launching other icons, seeing
>> what other buddies are around and participating in your activities,
>> activating the overlay, etc.  It's part of the interface.  Perhaps it
>> needs more discoverability...
>
> I think there are some details missing from the implementation here,
> as well, which will make it clearer in the end.  Foremost, the
> animation which shows it sliding in and out overtop of the fullscreen
> activity instead of just appearing on top of it should do a lot to
> convey it's peripheral functionality and one's ability to call it up
> anytime from anywhere.  In particular, this indicates that it is
> essentially a temporary layer.

Yeah I was thinking about this yesterday. I think it will make a big 
difference.

> Also, any kind of first-run experience
> that introduces the frame, or perhaps even showing it for a few
> seconds each time the computer starts up before hiding it could help.
>

We are auto-showing it for a few seconds already. A first run experience 
thing would be really nice to have, we have ticket open about it. All 
that we need is someone to work on it I guess :)

> Perhaps we should disable the ability to toggle it on permanently with
> the hotkey, if that makes things confusing and makes the underlying
> interface unusable.  Instead, tapping the key once could pop it out
> for a predefined interval of, say, 3 seconds, whereas holding the key
> would keep it in view until the key is released.  Thoughts?

That could work too. I'd rather try it out with the animation 
implemented and on the real machine (where we actually have a frame key 
rather than F5) before making changes though.

Marco