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Mandrakelinux Default Desktop Discussion


mousematt
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okay, going :offtopic: for some minutes...

 

the wallpaper idea is not bad, but how about that idea?

 

open web browser, go to wallpaper site, right-click on file: "set as wallpaper" or "save to wallpaper folder and set as wallpaper". two actions with one click. would be nice imo. and the user should be able to define in browser or kde or anywhere else (kcontrol?) where the wallpaper-folder will be and how it will be named. : )

 

now, back on track: i had some other ideas:

if someone uses a dial-up connection, it would be useful to have a little symbol in the taskbar that shows data-transfer (similar to the windows systray modem-control icon). maybe also an con that shows incoming emails (just like in gnome-taskbar "x messages, y unread") ?

 

the "launch new session" icon: i think a simple monitor-icon is useful as default icon or alternatively a symbolized user-icon. the rocket is nonsense anyway. ;)

 

edit:

Default look of Mandrakelinux 10.1 beta 2 (fonts are changed)

buaaaah.... purple-star button again... :wacko: :wacko: :wacko:

Edited by arctic
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made a wallpaper that might be good, although relatively simple.

 

for the QT/widget theme you should stick with Galaxy, thats my opinion, it is something Mandrake have developed and made, and it should be stuck with.

 

However, the Galaxy window border is atrocious. The plastic one used previous looks nice though.

 

 

And maybe we should take a slightly different approach to this, we are all changing things to things we like, when the mandrake way is reasonable. Why dont we hilight the problems, reasons for these, and then suggest improvements.

 

As for the icons, i love the mandrake icons and they are perfectly acceptable. What we are suggesting is just an alternative that we prefer!

 

I am on Arch here, and am just installing KDE now so I can help here, can someone help me and get me the mandrake icons? tar.gz rpm, whatever you find. I am pretty sure the icons are located in /usr/share/pixmaps or /usr/share/icons so if someone targz'd that for me it would be awesome!

 

Anyway, people have complained that the default wallpaper is way too blue, i had a quick play and made some.

this is one i prepared earlier:

 

http://mandrakeusers.org/index.php?act=Att...ype=post&id=993

 

iphitus

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Well ipithus, I'm not on Mandrake anymore, so it is kind of hard to get that 'default' Mandrake look. I rather look at this as kind of an 'exercise' , trying out how things could possibly improved. Btw, I prefer Crystal an Noia icons ;)

 

As far as I'm concerned, I am changing things to things I think are *usable*, of course I will make the desktop look the/a way I like it. I think the ongoing discussion has highlighted a few small points which would otherwise have probably gone unnoticed.

 

Futher, mousematt is the one who is going to use the suggestions to make his proposal, and I am sure he will make sure Mandrake identity is kept alive.

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And maybe we should take a slightly different approach to this, we are all changing things to things we like, when the mandrake way is reasonable. Why dont we hilight the problems, reasons for these, and then suggest improvements.

 

As for the icons, i love the mandrake icons and they are perfectly acceptable. What we are suggesting is just an alternative that we prefer!

yes and no. we are discussing this not only on what WE like best, but what is best for the average user and what looks best for a business desktop. this has a lot to do with first look and intuitive approach to a desktop. i agree that mandrake could stick to the mandrake-galaxy theme (and i would not moan) as it is their baby and their "unique tattoo".

if i would discuss this only on what i like best, there would be baghira with kxdocker by default and only two icons on the desktop: home and dustbin. but this is not the approach i take. as we all know, the crystal-set, used as default iconset in mandrake is basically an iconset designed by everaldo for conectiva-linux. in my opinion, this is a good icon set, but the nuvola icons are even more self-explaining, while being similar to crystal and they can co-exist with the mandrake icons. so... why should all distros use crystal in kde? why not nuvola if it's maybe even better?

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I'm sorry guys, but at one point the IRC chat became unusable for me. I think it has something to do with my ISP cutting my surfing speed in half for exceeding my maximum (upload) bandwith! it feels like less than half! :angry:

 

So I won't join you any longer and tomorrow I'll be reading a book while a wait for my quota to get 'under' the red...

 

hope you have an interesting IRC discussion still.

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Guest LinuxWizard
Maybe just the size of the taskbar and buttons down there.. in my opinion it's more useful if it's set to Normal and for my taste Large is even better.

 

I personally don´t like the "Normal" size of the Taskbar. I like it small and nice, as it is in MS Windows (and I gues most Windows users agree). I also need the space on the desktop for other things than only a taskbar. I love mankrake because they are one of the only distros that come with a good looking SMALL taskbar.

 

The main thing that should change are the context menus in konqueror and within the taskbar. They should be similar to the menus in MS Windows and not overloaded (as they are now). f.e. do a right click on a minimized window in kde 3.1.4 and do it in kde 3.3. Note the different. KDE gets bigger and more useless with every version.

 

Also I would like to see some mods to the drak utilitys. I don´t need one tool to install packages / one tool to remove packages and one tool to update my sources list.

 

The shell frontent should include all features that the X frontend does. (Take a look at Yast)

 

Even the printer and network configuration could be optmimized.

 

Best Regards

LinuxWizard

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Guest Adriano

My vote too for Small taskbar. a 1024x768 screen loses a lot of real estate with bigger taskbars.

 

Speaking of changes and of the beta 2 screenshot above: do Mandrake not see how ugly it looks if the icons on the desktop are not aligned? It's very easy to set. This shouldn't be a problem.

 

As per other suggestions:

 

-Dictionary on the taskbar... Hm. That might be alright for an English speaker, but I don't know if the quality of the dicts is the same for all "important" languages (important meaning "many $language speakers use and buy Mandrake").

 

-Clear, simple icons please (or do something like MacOSX icons). The Mozilla icon in Yuyo's screenshots doesn't suggest a browser, and the Gaim icon doesn't imply a messaging app. Either change the icon or the name to something meaningful.

 

As per clarity and quality of MCC:

- A while ago, I submitted a fairly thorough usability bug for Mandrake 10's draksec module of MCC. Draksec is a great tool, but the options offered are very ambiguous. You can check what I mean in mandrake's bugzilla. it's bug 6969, "Unclear explanations in draksec". It's supposed to be somewhat fixed in 10.1.

 

I can't follow Cooker or the betas now (small HD, work machine, all the usual explanations) but I'd like to know if this has been fixed. I suppose I can ask bugzilla, but if anyone here knows...

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well. as darkelve got cut-off of our discussion yesterday, here is the result of our discussion of the galaxy-windeco:

 

galaxy windeco should be used as default as well as mandrake-galaxy style (because of consistency with gtk/qt) although with some minor changes:

 

1. the windeco should be a modified rounded style. the buttons for close, minimize,... must be bigger and more easily identified by the user. white background with a small blue cross won't help. get rid of the beveling, thus making the buttons bigger. they should also think of adding a coloring-option to the buttons. (e.g. red color for close by default would be nice. I will try to make a screenshot of that idea, modifying it in gimp.)

 

2. the coloring must be changed. the default gradient to black in the lower part should be removed and a complete, user defined coloring available. thus, there could be different gradient-shades of blue in the windeco, instead of ony blue-black gradient. every other windeco has this option. why not galaxy?

 

3. the buttons in galaxy-style (not windeco) should be a little bit smaller, similar to plastic in its size. big buttons are nice, but they are a little bit too big, without adding functionality. also the gradient from gray to white should be changed from gray to light gray/almost white. thus it will be more eye friendly.

 

any further ideas?

Edited by arctic
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Don't you think it's a bit to dark? If that is the first impression Mandrake will make I'm sure it will be a depressive one. I haven't read the whole threat but if this is the result of the discussion some people here must have really bad taste :D

 

Fortunately the French have excellent taste and I'm sure Mandrake will come up with a very good default theme. (and yes, let's hope it's based on plastik and nuvola, and with bright colours :D )

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Guest Adriano

Yes, I think the darkness is excessive too. But perhaps it contrasts well with the light grey of the apps. One thing I think you know is that the galaxy's right border is too sharply cut, it should fade better. Still, it's a very tasteful image, non distractive but very attractive and smart. I like it. A little less black, a bit more blue, and it could be perfect.

 

Another problem:

 

Galaxy so far is just the name of Mandrake's GUI theme. It's not a predominant concept in the interface. I mean, it's nothing revolutionary, just a set of colors, widgets and background image. So the phrase "Welcome and explore the Mandrake Linux Galaxy" seems a bit overblown. One would expect Galaxy was a predominant concept of Mandrake's desktop, something special. Not just a desktop theme.

 

Maybe by the time we wrap up this excellent thread this concept I talk about will have begun to happen. I'd really like that.

 

Definitions of the Galaxy concept, then? I'd say:

- comfort / ease of use / usability

clear icons, a default theme that doesn't shock the user and instead reinvigorates him. Easy to reach and use icons. Think of old people. Think of nearsighted people. Think of color blindness. The GNOME HIG addresses many of these issues). The luna window buttons in Win XP did have a good side: they were big, clear, easily noticeable. Mandrake's minimize-maximize-close look very small. The size of the fonts is also something important. I can work with tiny fonts. My 55 year old parents cannot, and they're still young.

The common folders and desktop mods we did are steps in this direction.

 

- discoverability / clarity / good behaviour / least surprise

always try to do the action that implies the least surprise to the user. Do not return an error message ("your password is incorrect") when I cancel the MCC login. That's surprising, and bad. Clean the UI for MCC, and make it more responsive. Sometimes when you are installing RPMs, the RPMDrake main window is not repainted until the program finishes an action... looks awful if you move the small front window around over the other one.

 

- i18n (it could hardly be a galaxy without this)

Galaxy is good at this, but there's always room for improvement.

 

- unity

'tween GNOME, KDE, xmms, motif-ish apps, OO.o, Moz, etc. Not only the look, but also the feel. Please hardcode a set of keystroke combinations to do common actions on the desktops, and leave the rest to the apps. This implies a lot of work in coordination with freedesktop.org, KDE and GNOME, I know. Other details: a Galaxy theme for xmms (unless it's completely superseded by Kaffeine/Totem/mplayer/whatchamacallit). Still, do a decent galaxy theme for mplayer, its common default used to be hideous. If you supply 5 different WMs, it's not that hard to set the same background and theme to all of them. Or maybe a similar color for the "hardcore" ones as Blackbox.

 

- elegance / beauty

I believe anybody will agree with me on this. I think we are making some good steps towards elegance at least.

 

- revolution

this is the difficult one: what could be so innovative, so great as to create a Galaxy "concept" beyond the desktop theme? Perhaps thinking of Galaxy as the embodiment of the "Mandrake way".

 

Perhaps somebody else can help me?

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I won't say anything about the usuablitly of Mandrake or what applications should be the default but I have something to say about the design.

 

When you look at the Mandrake homepage the colours are light blue, yellow and red. If Mandrake has a corporate identity these colours are part of it. (they are a bit like the Swedish flag or like the Dutch railways). If you would want to project a Mandrake image I would guess you would want to use these colours.

 

http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=7779

http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=15451

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