I’ve been reading about Gnome 3.0 lately and I’ve run across some interesting links.
I thought the lazuli mockups looked quite nice. One problem I see in Gnome is that many programs feel quite heavy — e.g., I use evolution only for its calendar, and it seems like an awful lot of UI for something that is conceptually much less important. Programs should have a UI presence about equal to their general importance in my daily life; I only “calendar” occasionally. So, my calendar ought to be invisible most of the time (evo does this well), and quite minimal when I do pull it up (evo fails here). The lazuli screenshots seem to capture this idea pretty well.
This site is sort of a bumptop-y thing written in flash. It is pretty fun to play with. If you click on one link in this post, click on this one.
Gimmie looks pretty cool.
I’m including a link to the Mozilla desktop only because it exists. Mostly I think focusing on the implementation technology is a mistake. Users don’t care — I know I sure don’t. Working on multiple platforms is nice, too, and I can see how that would be useful, but doesn’t fit into my reality.
On the calendaring front, wuja looks like an interesting idea. I’m not a huge fan of web-only software; wuja bridges the gap in a nice way.
4 Comments
Most users may not care about the implementation, but they should care about Open Standards and interoperability. And I think Mozilla is certainly a step in the right direction. A platform should only be there to enable, it is up to those who use it to dream up the applications.
I think that I like TWM, the really minimal window manager that comes with X Windows. Blank screen -> Right-click -> Run application. Chuck in Macintosh style Expose and you’re away.
The trouble with both Gnome and KDE is that they try to be like Windows Vista, but fall far short in practise.
I like the idea of “Create, Communicate, Configure” suggested by this “KDE 4” mockup (it looks more GNOMEish to me). http://www.kde-look.org/content/pre1/28476-1.jpg
I like how you use BumpTop as an adjective. Nice!