[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] control panel window

[Walter Bender]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 5:14 AM, Gary Martin <garycmartin at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 25 Jun 2010, at 07:50, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 22:37, Gary Martin <garycmartin at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> On 24 Jun 2010, at 17:03, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> have heard in IRC that users are confused by the remainings of the
>>>> screen that are displayed around the control panel dialog.
>>>>
>>>> The person reporting the issue believes that having the control panel
>>>> window covering the whole screen would help.
>>>>
>>>> Anybody has any insights of which is this problem really about and
>>>> which alternatives we have?
>>>
>>> Is there any way yet to dim/darken that outside edge (and make it inactive to clicks)? The idea is that these partial screen covering modal windows would keep some visual layering context of the environment they were spawned from. If we still can't do alpha compositing, how about an on off black pixel dither of the underlying window? Not sure what technical choices are available.
>>
>> AFAIK, those are the two possibilities we have for presenting a dimmed
>> background.
>>
>>> The other possibility is to treat the control panel as an activity like UI, in much the same way as the Journal. Opens it's own full screen display with the cp icon in the top frame so you can switch away and back again if needed.
>>
>> Yup, but seems like there are situations in which you need to block
>> the user because the operation going on can be adversely affected by
>> normal use (I think we should keep trying hard to drop that
>> requirement if we want a good UX).
>
> One other thought then is to trigger such required modal tasks outside of Sugar during shutdown, or at startup. Journal backup and restore, for example, could be just as adversely effected by an Activity running hidden in the background as if a user is fiddling while a backup task is running.

It is nt clear to me what are the tasks that require the CP to be
modal. For many operations, it seems that already, when we change a
setting that is going to impact activities, etc., we request a restart
already, Why not wait until then to "go modal". Meanwhile, we could
behave as a normal activity, full screen with vertical scrolling (and
perhaps a more prominent indication that there is more below. (I heard
in both lpy and .uy that people are not discovering controls that are
off the screen to the right.)

-walter

>
> Regards,
> --Gary
>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Tomeu
>>
>>> Regards,
>>> --Gary
>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> Tomeu
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>>>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>>
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>



-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org