Unity: a lightweight netbook interface for Ubuntu
markshuttleworth.com
markshuttleworth.com
If it's all about speed and lightness they might want to drop firefox for chrome. The difference is very noticeable on an Atom 1.6gighz, and in the upcoming ARM powered devices it will be too.
It pains me to write this, because I've been a happy and devoted Firefox user since the early days of Mozilla, but I am gradually shifting over to using Chrome for straight browsing - though I still rely on Firefox and the unparalleled Firebux addon for troubleshooting web applications.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latitude_ON
Latitude ON runs MontaVista Linux on an ARM-based subprocessor. This so-called MontaVista Montabello Mobile Internet Device Solution provides a customizable, Linux-based Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform the laptop is able to boot almost instantly and view Email, document reader, calendar, contacts and access the Internet ... Dell claims that up to 19 hours of battery life on standard lithium ion batteries can be achieved with this system.
As a Ubuntu Netbook Remix user, though, I'm looking at the window titlebar and wondering, what happened to the titlebar-integrates-into-top-panel stuff from UNR? Shouldn't that remain a part of the "conserving precious vertical display space" approach?
When 90% of your end users are old people who rarely use a computer you have to ask them about there needs. You will collect the 'votes' and may discover you have to drop some functionalities. And maybe a slider UI will be better than a number ticker/spinner control.
Because users are dumb.
I watch them make bad decisions all the time; they want to put a box of 60 categories here in the left nav of the page; they want to have a drop-down menu for every department in the hospital. "Asking" ten users how a user-interface should work, and you'll get ten incompatible and stupid answers.
The trick to using users to get good UI is to have a programmer watch them try a prototype (or using paper prototypes). Of course, the programmer has to be tied to a chair and have his mouth duct-tape'd closed so he doesn't try and help, but the fact is when he sees the "inputs", he'll optimize the layout correctly to suit them. Programmers make fine user-interface designers when they're properly motivated.
When a user wants a drop-down for every department in the hospital you could translate this into "I want to select a department as easy and quickly as possible".
Otherwise, I agree with what you're saying about letting users "design" the UI without actually asking them to design a UI.
Ignorance is not stupidity. I agree that asking users to make UI decisions isn't the best approach, but calling users dumb because they can't use your software is dumb.
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-dx-team/une/ubuntu lucid main
apt-get install unity
unity --show
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys AA2BB78B7AE26941Seriously, Open Source marketing should be improved in this level of detail. Yes netbooks have shallow screens, then why wasting 145 precious vertical pixels to show non-content controls on a web browser window only 428 pixels high?
Some naive ways to improve the impression:
* Make the browser window taller, preferably taking all available vertical space. Present more web content when you really want to improve the web experience. (Right now I can only see the big heading of NYT, not really interesting.)
* Bundle one of those Hide Menu plugin to kill menu bar. How often do you really need it? And when you do need it, just click one button on the url bar to summon it.
* Choose a page that is slightly narrower or widen the window a little bit (you have the horizontal pixels to waste!) so horizontal scroll does not show up.
* Hide the status bar. Most users don't look at it anyway.
* If there is only one tab, don't show the tab bar.
Or better yet, replacing Firefox with Chrome solves it once and for all.
We have wide screens now, and a lack of vertical space. The solution seems obvious to me; don't take up vertical space with desktop UI and move it to the side instead.
I love the gnome-shell, but I'd love it more if I could get those top pixels back. On a netbook, every little bit counts.
I tried this with the past four versions of Ubuntu (8.10, 9.04, 9.10 and 10.04) on my Aspire One. In the first three cases I went back to a top or bottom panel because the side panel was ugly and unusable. With 10.04, a right-side panel is actually decent for the first time. It's not great - e.g. the shutdown applet is still too wide and doesn't flip vertically - but it's decent.
http://jboriss.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/removing-firefoxs-st...
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/333
I'm hopeful they've actually communicated about this in private with each other, but maybe that's hoping for too much.
Make it look nice with excellent fonts and i am sold. I know this is not designed for a workstation - but for standard browsing, checking emails and general usage , this could be it.
If they wanted to save more vertical screen real estate, Ubuntu could take another hint from Apple and enable Global Menu Bar by default ( http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/ )
I've been using it on a small acer netbook with a 3G card in it and it has worked pretty well in that configuration for me, I'm curious how they compare but I'm loathe to install stuff on it without some idea of what I'm getting in to because it is a machine I rely on in emergencies (on the road, server down).
I have been working in a similar desktop on my wide-screen laptop for nearly a year now. I feel much more productive. It took me some time and skills to configure it, but the tools are already available. I use Openbox+Tint2+Conky and some other lightweight utilities. Also Tree Style Tab extension for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890 Since they are talking about getting users to the browser faster, they may as well tweak the browser to work better in this environment.
It is more natural when window/tab hierarchy flows from left to right, than from left and then from top.
1) The gradient on the window titlebar is too pronounced and isn't consistent with the left sidebar.
2) Fonts don't look awesome - they are okay though. Please just license or create a truly great font!
3) Icons on the sidebar don't look right. I'd rather no background personally.
But, sub-pixel rendering is just a diversion from the real differences between the two systems, one fits to the grid via hints, the other anti-aliases. I believe both iPhone and Windows Phone are now using this system, and without bothering with sub-pixel rendering.
I can't Google up a definitive answer but this document comparing Adobe type rendering against Cleartype seems to suggest that what I say above is true.
Microsoft and Adobe: Sub-pixel Positioning and Kerning:
My overall point is that calling ClearType "old-skool" is an injustice when it's more technically advanced than Apple's rendering.
Old-skool referred to a) the fact that it's subjectively more pleasing to those who are used to aliased, bitmap fonts hence the big demand for "terminal" or programmer fonts in that style, even today and b) the fact the rising DPIs have been on the cards for a long time and are now arriving, making cleartype technology, and the aesthetic philosophy behind it, basically redundant.
I don't really believe it's more technically advanced, just a different style of rendering that worked with a different set of technological and user-defined constraints.
(For what it's worth, when I looked up what sub-pixel positioning was, it was listed next to Y-axis anti-aliasing with equal billing. Again this is just built into the Adobe and Apple approach from the start: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms749295.aspx#y-dire...)
Seems like you're still missing the point. You'll see the colour fringes with ClearType too. Here's a test:
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Do all of those render identically on Mac OS X, or are the colour fringes different for different i's? They render differently on Windows with DirectWrite. If they render differently then you know you support sub-pixel positioning. (I can't claim the inverse, of course.)
> b) the fact the rising DPIs have been on the cards for a long time and are now arriving, making cleartype technology, and the aesthetic philosophy behind it, basically redundant.
How is this so? As DPI goes to infinity, both ClearType and Quartz will look exactly like they would look in print.
Oh hell. Now I have to run out to my pickup and grab my netbook. There goes a productive morning.