[Sugar-devel] Home view activities layout

[Frederick Grose]

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 12:22 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Christian Marc Schmidt
> <christianmarc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Again, I think that there is likely a better solution to the question of
> > scalability. An extensible (scrolling or panning) grid or freeform view
> > showing activity previews would not only convey more information about
> the
> > last activity, it would also make the home view feel more
> personalized. For
> > scalability we could try something akin to OSX spaces or iOS, adding
> > additional screens that kids can pan between as the collection of
> activities
> > grows.
> > I don't disagree with the premise--I just think that there is a better
> > solution than the spiral (it, too, will eventually run out of space).
>

Christian has considered scalability above, but may not be aware of
discussions of related usability features, such as Home item or Journal item
grouping, (Home views and Journal integration)
http://www.mail-archive.com/sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org/msg15159.html,
and the video Aleksey shared on bookmark grouping (Tab Candy)
http://www.mail-archive.com/sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org/msg15187.html.

C. Scott also identifies the importance of utility over simple scalability.


> Any pattern will eventually run out of space. A space-filling curve
> (Peano curve) might be interesting. There is an orthogonal question,
> which is if we let the icons move (as with the new spiral and the old
> random arrangements, how do we tell it to reset to the original
> layout? My less-than-satisfactory  solution is to have one button for
> reseting and one fr switching in the secondary menu.
>

What is the information value of an earlier than previous pattern view? (If
that's what you are asking.)

Now, when we switch from one pattern to another, the pattern remembers its
sorting, except for icons that were moved in the Freeform pattern, which are
moved to the '00 hh' position of the Ring, pushing the other icons clockwise
(in a reverse queue, if there were multiple moves).  The inter-pattern
adjustments may not be appropriate (other than, perhaps, the Freeform->fixed
adjustment, which had some information-highlighting utility (still a fixed
pattern would be re-arrangeable, thankfully, in the current proposals).

        --Fred
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