I agree that we should drop freeform, and choose one, iconic, layout. Then we could plan for easy searching - using tags, names, or recentness - which greyed out the unselected apps. If we did this, my vote would be: ring up to 16 activities, then a single (non-sunflower) spiral. <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Walter Bender <<a href="mailto:walter.bender@gmail.com">walter.bender@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> I haven't studied it in any scientific way, but I have never seen anyone use freeform in the field. I can also make a strong case for its inappropriateness in the classroom and the additional support overhead. For simplicity-sake, if for no other reason, we should drop it. That said, I cannot argue with your observation that an overloaded ring is problematic as well. For 0.86, we should consider some of spiral options, such as the sunflower, which are much more space efficient. At the same time, I think the real answer lies in better use the idea that groups of activities can be selected for the ring: a teacher might say to the child, this week, I want everyone to put Browse, Write, and Turrtle Art on their desktops. At home, a different collection might be available. So maybe we can explore the notion of collections rather than layouts? -walter On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt <<a href="mailto:christianmarc@gmail.com">christianmarc@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > I fully understand your confusion, this issue has been going back and > forth for too long. > > We should probably talk this over more thoroughly before deciding > either way. Nicholas had (and I'm assuming still has) very strong > reservations about the ring, which caused us to reconsider it, but at > the time it was too late to change and it made it into the build. As > you know I was initially in favor of the ring (which I think has a > strong iconic presence), but when I began seeing screenshots of > overloaded rings it seemed like the favorites model perhaps wasn't > working as well as we had hoped. > > This is a case where it would really help to do observations and see > how children are using the Home view, and which of the two views they > prefer using... Or do we have any findings and observations we can > already draw from? > > For now, the question remains which view (freeform/ring) we use to > represent Sugar. Or perhaps at least in the interim it would make > sense to avoid Home altogether and use the Neighborhood view as the > "signature" shot? > > I agree that we would ideally keep either the ring or freeform, but > not both, for simplicity... > > More discussion ahead, I sense. > > > Christian > > > On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Walter Bender <<a href="mailto:walter.bender@gmail.com">walter.bender@gmail.com</a>> wrote: >> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt >> <<a href="mailto:christianmarc@gmail.com">christianmarc@gmail.com</a>> wrote: >>> Hi Sean >>> >>> >>> We are currently debating moving to freeform view as the default >>> (maybe even the only) view in Home. To be on the safe side, should we >>> use that view here instead, seeing as it already exists in the UI? >>> CC'ing Walter for his thoughts as well... >>> >> >> Boy am I ever confused. I thought (and hoped) that we were going to >> get rid of the freeform view, not the ring view. >> >> -walter >> >> -- >> Walter Bender >> Sugar Labs >> <a href="http://www.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">http://www.sugarlabs.org</a> >> > > > > -- > <a href="mailto:anything@christianmarcschmidt.com">anything@christianmarcschmidt.com</a> > > <a href="http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com" target="_blank">http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com</a> > > 917/ 575 0013 > -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs <a href="http://www.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">http://www.sugarlabs.org</a> _______________________________________________ Sugar-devel mailing list <a href="mailto:Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org">Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel</a> </blockquote></div>