[Sugar-devel] Journal feature request--more data in main display

[Gary C Martin]

On 1 Jul 2009, at 11:36, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 19:02, Gary C Martin<gary at garycmartin.com>  
> wrote:
>> Being Mr ActivityTeam at the moment, I do really worry about the
>> amount of work this is going to be to get Activities updated and
>> complying to a large toolbar redesign. Supporting both toolbar API
>> styles will help, but I think we'll end up with multiple toolbar
>> styles in different Activities for perhaps 6 months to a year or  
>> more.
>> That's a bad backward step for usability. Just look at the amount of
>> time/effort it is taking to migrate Activities over to SL
>> infrastructure, let alone making anything but minor maintenance code
>> changes to them.
>
> True, so what do you suggest here?


No magic answers I'm afraid. I'm just saying... One thing we could do  
to try to move forward on the new toolbar concept is to build svg  
icons for as many of the tabs that are already in use. We need to come  
up with clear and identifiable icon for each **before** moving forward  
(not just the few obvious common cases view/edit/image/text/format/ 
colour/etc).

Here's a quick trawl, not a full list. If we can't manage these, it  
would be unfair to expect Activity Authors to have any more success.  
Note: that some of these may need Activity specific variants, though  
we may be able to drop some if we are willing to redesign some  
Activities current UI:

Algebra
Audio
Books
Boolean
Browse
Chat
Collaboration
Comment
Create
Edit
Effects
Face
Format
Game
Graph
Help
Image
Learn
Lessons
Library
Miscellaneous
Montage
Video
Paint
Photo
Plain
Play
Project
Read
Robot
Save/Load
Shapes
Slides
Sort
Tab
Table
Text
Tools
Trigonometry
View
Voice
Watch

I'm thinking the toolbar design as specced does not seem viable for  
the 0.86 time scale. Leaving us with the nasty issue trying to solve  
what I see as a current worst toolbar usability offender, "Stop button  
must be visible at all times." Perhaps a stop gap measure of placing  
the Activity stop button permanently in the sacrosanct top right  
corner? Can't believe I suggest that, but it's the best suggestion I  
have...

Regards,
--Gary