Announcing Every Detail Matters

Today I’m announcing a new GNOME initiative called Every Detail Matters, the aim of which is to take care of all the little details and make sure that every part of GNOME 3 really shines. It will also provide great opportunities for those wanting to contribute to GNOME.

Minor visual and operational details make a huge difference to the user experiences that we provide. Small bugs can seriously undermine the overall experience. At the same time, little details can make the difference between being good and being amazing. The aim of Every Detail Matters is to focus in on these small details and make sure that we get them right.

Every Detail Matters will be divided into rounds, each of which will focus on a different part of GNOME 3. Designers and developers will work together to identify what needs improving, how to make it better, and implementing the required changes. We’re going to make sure that each round ends with a noticeable improvement to the component that we’re working on.

If you want to contribute to GNOME, Every Detail Matters is a great way to get involved. Every bug featured in the initiative is something that will make a real, noticeable difference. Furthermore, you can be assured that support will be on hand, whether it is through patch reviews or design advice. Check out the Every Detail Matters wiki page if you are interested, or just get in touch.

For the first round of Every Detail Matters, we will be focusing on the Activities Overview. This is obviously an important part of GNOME 3, and there are lots of small things that can be done that will make a big difference. Since the Activities Overview is part of GNOME Shell, this round of Every Detail Matters gives you the chance to work with cutting edge GNOME technologies. If you know Javascript and CSS, or you want to learn them, this will be perfect for you.

So far we have 35 bugs that we want to fix in the first Every Detail Matters round, which will run until the end of this development cycle (hard code freeze is 19 March). We’re setting a target – we want to make sure that no fewer than 20 of these bugs are fixed by the time of the next release. If this happens, we can be sure that there will be a noticeable and dramatic improvement in the Activities Overview in GNOME 3.4.

So, who wants to fix the first bug‽

Many thanks to Lucas Rocha for his ideas and for the name.

12 thoughts on “Announcing Every Detail Matters”

  1. Sounds good. Is a redesigned Suspend/Restart/Shutdown menu on the list (serious question)?

    1. Robin, we’re focusing on the Activities Overview for this round. So no. :)

      That doesn’t mean that that issue won’t get looked at, just that it won’t happen as a part of this initiative.

  2. So, re-branded Papercuts. Always a good idea for a project to do this type of bughunting!

    1. Hi Vadim, it’s not quite the same process as Papercuts. Every Detail Matters is actually closer to Mozilla’s Are We Pretty Yet? These initiatives have very similar aims but their methodologies are slightly different.

  3. I always loved the 100 papercuts concepts from Ubuntu, so I find it awesome that GNOME took it upstream, where it will have the most impact. :)

    Now, this round focuses on small things to make the overview better, but shouldn’t that wait untill the overview redesign? (Jimmac’s “kill mode switch”)

    I mean, if a big redesign is to happen, then some of the work done during this round might be invalidated?

    Unless I’m very late to the party and that redesign already landed in Git? :P

    In any case, thanks for your work on GNOME 3, and keep rocking!

  4. This is a really cool initiative that will do a lot of good for GNOME. Nice work!

    Speaking of the shell, what’s the current status of the killing-mode-switch work? If there’s a bug I can subscribe to follow its progress, please let me know!

    Cheers.

  5. You said it: Every detail matters.

    This is a great and much needed initiative. Keep going!

  6. Great initiative!
    Just a question: your first aim is to perfect the Activities Overview but, what about software categories? It’s obvious that the actual design is not definitve, so when are you going to work on it?

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