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

[Sean DALY]

Hi Daniel looks great

May I suggest using the word "interface" instead of "desktop" from
within Sugar? Learners don't use a desktop :-)

And, if I may, I'd like to put in a word for having the Sugar logo on
the control panel screens referring to Sugar. For example if
http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/sugar-active-sugar.png said:

"Active interface environment:" followed by a little Sugar logo.
Preferably not the green outline/blue fill, we want to rotate through
the 12 combinations :-)

If a small Sugar logo could be added to the Gnome "choose Sugar"
window that would be grand

Sugar logos resources are here:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Logo

Also, under the screenshot showing the two environments
(http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/sugar-active-gnome.png), I feel a
small logo would catch the eye more easily than plain text.

For the Sugar screenshot, perhaps a dim grey outline showing the
frontier between the white background of the screenshot and the white
background of the screen would help communicate the choice between the
two screens. And, having the fat Sugar mouse pointer in the screenshot
would help quick identification too, it's one of the visually striking
graphic elements of Sugar and easily recognizable to Learners.
Finally, may I suggest adding a "Restart now" button to the right of
the "Cancel changes" button? If the intent is to reboot in the
alternate environment, such a button would save steps and avoid
ambiguity, and I'm concerned that the proposed path is to click the
check button at the top then reboot manually. Which should by the way
work as well, but I feel a dedicated button (as when switching
languages) would be clearer. The manual method could remain for
someone who for any reason wishes to set the next boot to Gnome
(perhaps the little brother who wants to finish up something before
rebooting and handing off to big sister).

Apple by the way handled exactly this problem with the OS9/OSX boot
choices which differed in each environment. As here they propose
selecting a different default boot OS and either rebooting right away
or deferring it.

I don't suppose there will be a keyboard press or combination to
bypass default boot desktop and boot into the alternate instead? Apple
did that too, in fact with several combos (boot alternate, propose
choice etc.)

thanks

Sean

P.S. is it you I could speak with about briefly showing a Sugar logo
at Sugar boot? After debating lots of ideas with lots of mockups for
Sugar on a Stick we went with a Sugar logo during the first three dots
and the Xo avatar for the remaining ones. We chose variant #06 because
SoaS v1 will be called Strawberry and we will change the boot color
and name for each SoaS iteration, the idea being to aid
unsophisticated users who can communicate version info just from the
boot logo color.


On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Daniel Drake<dsd at laptop.org> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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