[Sugar-devel] Initial implementation of toolbars design

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Tomeu,

On 1 Aug 2009, at 15:37, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

>>>> Well, I have around 14(including TamTamMini) activities on git.sl.o
>>>> to switch to new toolbars.. so you can wish me luck.
>>>
>>> Good luck!
>>>
>>> Quick question: Are you going to try and support existing
>>> deployments and keep and maintain both toolbar implementations? That
>>> is certainly (but painfully) my plan, as that's where 99.9% of our
>>> users are. You might need to wish me luck as well, as I'm not half
>>> as code prolific as you ;-)
>>
>> I have secret weapon, sugar-port[1] for that purpose :)
>
> You mean each of those activities will ship with its own copy of the
> new toolbars? That's quite a bit scary from the support POV.

Activities run on old releases would continue to use old toolbar  
layout/design (no visible change for users or support docs etc), but  
if run on a release supporting the new toolbar design, they would use  
it instead. Activities for the foreseeable future will end up with two  
sets (old and new) of Toolbar creation logic, and some initial code  
logic to check if the new toolbar API is available and build the  
correct Toolbar. When adding new toolbar features or making changes,  
we (activity authors) will need to make sure to update and test both  
Toolbars layouts.

I'm not sure what I would recommend to a new author, both I guess if  
they have the time/patience :-( I'm likely to suggest they initially  
use the old design so that they get to the widest audience, and then  
once happy with their activity, add on the new toolbar design. If OLPC  
start deploying 0.86 at end of year, and/or old deployments start  
upgrading, and/or SoaS (or other dirstros) have some large deployments  
(>10K), then that advice clearly would change (i.e. build to new  
design, then back-port for existing deployments).

Regards,
--Gary