[Sugar-devel] Design review plea.. OLPC desktop switcher

[Daniel Drake]

Hi Eben/other interested victims,

I've designed (it's usually bad news when I've designed things) some
interfaces that allow for switching between Sugar and GNOME for the
XO-1.5 builds. I'm looking for feedback on the design and any
suggestions/contributions. 


By default, laptops boot straight up into Sugar.
But you might notice a new icon in the control panel named "Switch
desktop"
http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/sugar-controlpanel.png

If we click on that, under normal circumstances you will see:
http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/sugar-active-sugar.png

Then, when you click the "Switch to GNOME" button, it will look like
this:
http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/sugar-active-gnome.png

And if everything works right, this one will never be seen, but allows
for an escape route if something goes wrong:
http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/sugar-active-unknown.png


When you're in GNOME, there is an icon that says "Switch to Sugar" on
the desktop. It's also on the Applications menu, under System. When you
click on it, it brings up a dialog box that tells you to restart and
then you'll be back in Sugar again.
In this screenshot you can see the desktop item, the menu item, and the
output dialog box:
http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/gnome-ui.png


Code for all of that is at 
git://dev.laptop.org/users/dsd/olpc-switch-desktop
(latest updates to be pushed in a few minutes)


The Logout menu item in sugar is disabled. It's still there in GNOME,
but I'll look for a way to hide it. (when you logout, it just basically
restarts the desktop environment, so it's kind of pointless. A reboot is
acceptable for changing DE, and the logout concept is confusing when
there wasn't any logging in to begin with.)


Thoughts?

Thanks,
Daniel