[Sugar-devel] Feedback on SoaS

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 14:43, Caroline Meeks <solutiongrove at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Tomeu,
>
> I'm curious how setting which activities show up as Favorites works at a
> technical level.
>
> How hard is that to change? Its quite important right now as part of the
> initial user experience.  We don't want broken activities, we want cool
> activities that people "get" quickly.  Ideally, when a cool activity is
> fixed it would be great to add it to the beta, but we have to balance that
> against stability of the image.
>
> If its not too hard to change I think we should set up a wiki page where we
> can discuss what should be in the favorites rings and potentially update the
> image fairly regularly.

It's quite easy, a matter of editing this file here:

http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas/repos/mainline/blobs/master/sugar.ks#line83

and spinning a new build.

> Personally, I nominate FlipSticks and think InfoSlicer should not be in the
> ring.
>
> Also when a new activity is downloaded is it automatically added to the
> favorites ring?

Yes.

Regards,

Tomeu

> Thanks,
> Caroline
>
> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 23:21, James Simmons <jim.simmons at walgreens.com>
>> wrote:
>> > I haven't actually tried SoaS-Beta-1 (I'm assuming this is different
>> > from what was released on the 10th) but I do have some leftover comments
>> > based on what I saw last week.
>> >
>> > One thing we have to consider with Sugar on a Stick is that for many,
>> > maybe most people it will be their first experience of Sugar.  We need
>> > to consider that when we choose what Activities to install by default.
>> > We want Activities that make a good first impression.  By that, I mean
>> > Activities that a kid can click on the icon to bring them up and start
>> > fooling around with them without having to read instructions first.
>> >
>> > I am flattered as hell that View Slides made the cut, but as its author
>> > I say it is a lousy choice.  Read Etexts, which is not included but
>> > which I believe Aleksey Lim was thinking about including, would have
>> > been equally bad.  To actually use these Activities you need to read the
>> > website first.  You can't just click on their icons and get them to do
>> > anything useful.  To use View Slides you need to have some content in
>> > the Journal, it has to be in the correct format, and you have to do
>> > something non-obvious to Resume it.  View Slides doesn't make a good
>> > first impression.
>> >
>> > In contrast to that, the Tam Tam Activities make a *much* better first
>> > impression but are not included.
>>
>> In http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/768
>>
>> > Pippy might be a better choice than Develop, for similar reasons.  Pippy
>> > has built in code samples ready to try out.  Develop does not.  Also, on
>> > the machines I tried Develop used a *very* small font in the edit
>> > window.
>>
>> Created http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/767
>>
>> > I notice Read is not included.  Now Read *could* be something that gives
>> > a good first impression.  Suppose you had the DJVU evince plugins
>> > installed, you could perhaps start SoaS with an eBook from the Internet
>> > Archive already in the Journal.  A good choice might be the beautifully
>> > illustrated edition of The Wizard of Oz from that website, in either
>> > djvu or PDF format.  The kid would click on the entry in the Journal,
>> > and because it uses a MIME type that is only used by Read it would open
>> > right up.
>>
>> The idea was that viewer activities like Read, Read ETexts, etc would
>> not appear in the favorites window. They are installed (can see in the
>> activities list), but will be launched only once the user tries to
>> view some content from the journal.
>>
>> Has been suggested that we ship some files already in the journal.
>>
>> > I'm warming up to the idea of Unified Bundles that was discussed on
>> > Sugar-devel last week.  If we had that working we could include actual
>> > books in the Activity Ring and properly show off what Sugar could do
>> > with plain text files, slide shows, etc.
>> >
>> > Until then I would prefer that kids find out about Read Etexts and View
>> > Slides from http://activities.sugarlabs.org/.  They'll have a better
>> > idea what to expect from them if they read about them on that website
>> > first.
>>
>> Sounds good, please keep opening tickets so people are reminded about it.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Tomeu
>>
>> > James Simmons
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> >
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>
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>
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