Recently, there has been much debate over the Gnome file-selector dialog box. At the moment it looks rather old fashioned, even if it is intuitive and easy to use it lacks some of the recent UI improvements that have surfaced recently (such as the shortcuts-bar that appears on the left-hand side of many open/save dialog boxes now-a-days).
A few mock-up screen-shots of ideas for the new file-selector can be found here, here and here. Out of all the ideas I’ve seen, I like the design found in this item at OSNews. The accompanying explanation does a good job of explaining why the dialog is laid out is a somewhat unconventional manner. I agree with most of the arguments put forward and I especially like the ‘pathfinder’ widget used.
I released new version of dWall, v1.3, with the following new features:
You can get your own copy from the dWall page. I think there a bug may have crept in whereby stretching sometimes stretches wrong wallpaper. If anyone spots this, could they get in contact so I can try and fix it? Thanks =)
Finally I’ve spent a couple of hours doing some work on SharpE, after around four months of nothing. Why the change of heart, you may ask? There is a new SharpDesk developer who is writing much of the desktop, if not all of it. He’s been much more active than the previous dev, making me feel worse for now getting my act together.
However, that is not the main reason. We have got together and put both the SharpMenu and Desk code onto the Lowdimension cvs server, making it much easier to collaborate. I can now build the desktop with my menu code. I find being able to use the new desktop with my changes right away is much more of an incentive for me to code than having to email the code and then wait for a build to be sent back. A much quicker return on investment, you could say.
Over time, perhaps I come across as anti-Microsoft. This really is not the case: I am anti-proprietary. Even that is over stating it. I would place myself as anti-proprietary standards. I think that I should be able to do as many things as possible regardless of the platform that I wish to do them on.
Wherever a computer user seeks to communicate with the outside world, my belief is that there should be some Open standard that allows them to do this; whether it be a word processing document that needs to be sent to a colleague or the TCP/IP standard that allows this exchange of document to take place. That’s not to say that the programs that interpret such standards cannot or should not be proprietary, just that the document formats they use should be standard so that I can use a program of my choice to actually view them.
More Robert Love goodness. Whilst I know this is pre-preduction code and I probably won’t see it on my desktop for a year (or whatever), it’s still exciting to see such excellent work being done in this area.
A further step in the right direction would be more program integration, for example allowing applications to register their ability to play certain media and having a drop-down list with these applications in, in addition to the ability to set your own command. I’m sure this has been thought of though, especially as similar functionality is in other operating systems already.
