[Sugar-devel] Feedback on SoaS

[Sebastian Dziallas]

Let me add some thoughts here, too...

Caroline Meeks wrote:
> Hi Tomeu,
>
> I'm curious how setting which activities show up as Favorites works at a
> technical level.

As Tomeu explained, it's not really that hard. It's just a matter of 
figuring the activies' ID out and adding it then in the kickstart file.

> 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.

As I pointed out, the beta image has been composed and I don't think 
that we should spin new builds for it all day long. For example, we were 
discussing to include TamTam and Labyrinth. But both were quite late in 
the schedule (I'll hint again at the roadmap) and Labyrinth had at first 
some issues with Python 2.6, which ships with F11 and that way with 
SoaS. Those are obviously all great activities, but we decided to move 
them in the next snapshots, where they can be subsequently tested.

> 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.

This is what I've tried to get off the ground several times, for example 
here (without getting a reply): 
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-February/012303.html

It admittedly concerned the list of included activities, and not only 
the ones in the ring, but it clearly went in the same direction.

> Personally, I nominate FlipSticks and think InfoSlicer should not be in
> the ring.

I object against removing InfoSlicer. Even though it's probably not the 
shiny-eyecandy activity, I was personally overall impressed when Laura 
showcased it at FOSDEM. It's useful and content reorganization is really 
something worth promoting. I don't think we should hide it; but note, 
this is my subjective opinion.

> Also when a new activity is downloaded is it automatically added to the
> favorites ring?
>
> Thanks,
> Caroline

--Sebastian

> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org
> <mailto:tomeu at sugarlabs.org>> wrote:
>
>     On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 23:21, James Simmons
>     <jim.simmons at walgreens.com <mailto: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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>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>
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