[Sugar-devel] Journal feature request--more data in main display

[Gary C Martin]

Hi James,

On 3 Jul 2009, at 19:29, James Zaki wrote:

> Perhaps this is a late reply, (I am yet to read the last 6 or so  
> digests of to 20+ that were in my inbox)

No not late at all! :-)

> But I am always sensitive of little incremental additions that seem  
> like it would be useful.
>
> I always try to think about the first time I used sugar. In  
> particular, what helped by being very simple. We see sugar evolving,  
> and perhaps forget what it was like that first time. Perhaps we  
> should harass some friends and families' kids who've not seen it,  
> and get their feedback.

+1

> If a child new to the sugar interface (XO or otherwise) feels  
> bombarded with options, it could make things harder.

+1

> In particular to the pictures, there are lots of activities in that  
> dropdown. Has that always been so big? To me that would be  
> intimidating for the first user experience.

Just to check you're referring to:

	http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Proposals/Journal#What.2FAnything_palette

Yes this mock-up is currently showing the 33 Activities as shipped in  
the Sugar on a Stick Strawberry release from week or two ago. There's  
lots of discussion about what Activities a distribution should ship  
pre-installed, but this is something a school deployment, or parents  
group would want to be involved in. If I was introducing this to a  
child for the first time, I'd only install a small number of  
Activities to let them get comfortable. FWIW: I think the original  
G1G1 image installs about 27 Activities.

With the currently shipping Journal, there is a text menu called  
"Anything", when you click on it, it drops down a single vertical  
column list of everything you see in the above mock-up. The list is  
much larger than the height of screen, so you only see the first 14 or  
so items. To see the others, you have to scroll the menu using a small  
arrow at the bottom of the screen. When you want to undo your filter,  
you have to open the menu again and scroll it all the way back up  
again to find the "Anything" entry to click on. It's quite a fuss once  
you have many more than 9 Activities installed (the menu also holds 5  
generic file type filters for text/image/audio/video/link).

The multi-column approach is an attempt to reduce the need to scroll  
through tall menus.

If the Uruguay deployment has shown us anything, it's that kids love  
installing lots and lots of Activities :-) At http://activities.sugarlabs.org/ 
  there is already over 150 available for them!

Regards,
--Gary