gnome – Page 6 – Form and Function

Fantastic Progress in Every Detail Matters

Every Detail Matters is back for a second round, and let me tell you: it is bigger and better than ever. I have been totally blown away by the response we’ve received.

We managed to fix 20 Every Detail Matters bugs for GNOME 3.4. That target has already been blown out of the water for the 3.8 cycle. At the time of writing, I count 27 bugs fixed by 9 different contributors. We’ve got some really great fixes in there, like improving animations in the lock screen and making the login experience smoother. There’s also been some nice usability enhancements to the Message Tray and Activities Overview.

We’re not done yet though: there are 14 bugs that are currently being worked on, and many more that we want to tackle. I’m adding items to the list all the time, including new features as well as smaller tasks for newcomers. If you want to help make GNOME 3.8 awesome, check out the Every Detail Matters wiki page. If there isn’t something that appeals straight away, come back and check again: we’re updating the page all the time. There’s plenty of time to get involved.

Everyone who has contributed to Every Detail Matters has done a fantastic job so far. A special mention has to go out to Stéphane Démurget, who only recently started contributing, but who has been doing a brilliant job. Stéphane hasn’t just been fixing lots of bugs, but he has been fixing them with style, and has been a real pleasure to work with.

I’d also like to give big thanks to Giovanni Campanga, Florian Muellner and Jasper St. Pierre, who are regular contributors who have been busy fixing bugs and reviewing patches. And now for some screenshots of the work done so far. :)

Yes, it’s a detail. But then, details matter: we have a nicer looking run dialog now. The most important feature of this is that it now has a close button, which means that people have an escape route if they accidentally open it. Another thing that this screenshot shows is our new background shade, which is used for modal dialogs and the overview. It used to be a flat transparency, but it has now been updated to use a radial gradient. This gives added depth and atmosphere.

I’m cheating with this one, because it hasn’t actually landed yet. It is cool though: Florian has updated the lock screen to use a translucent top bar, which fits better with the overlaid screen shield metaphor that we’re using here. It also looks awesome. :)

Finally, another detail (which, like all details, matters): the login screen now has properly styled insensitive buttons, and we make sure that the Unlock button is insensitive until the password entry field contains some text.

Expect more updates in the future.

Announcing Every Detail Matters, Round 2

Details matter. Small aspects of a user interface make a huge difference. Get them right, and the experience becomes beautiful, satisfying and easy. Get them wrong, and it can be clunky, awkward and ugly. It’s only by paying attention to the details that we can raise the quality of the GNOME 3 user experience and make it fantastic.

Every Detail Matters was first run in the GNOME 3.4 development cycle, with the aim of getting the details right. We assembled an awesome crew of contributors who fixed, polished and enhanced the GNOME 3 experience, and who made a big difference to the quality of the 3.4 release.

Now Every Detail Matters is back. We’re going to be working hard through the 3.8 cycle to improve as many details as possible. Together, we’re aiming to make GNOME 3.8 the most polished version yet.

Every Detail Matters is a really good opportunity to make a contribution to GNOME. For the 3.8 cycle, we are targeting a whole range of bugs. Some are easy and good for beginners, and some are a bit trickier and will need a more experienced hand to fix. There’s something in there for everyone. If you fix just one bug, you can make a real difference to GNOME 3.

There’s a list of bugs that we are targetting on the Every Detail Matters wiki page. Thanks to the efforts of our developers, a bunch of them have already been fixed while I have been putting the list together. But we want to fix more of them. Like last time, we are aiming to resolve 20 of these issues before the end of the cycle.

We’re monitoring the Every Detail Matters bugs, and we’ll make sure that you get feedback and code review as fast as possible. So, pick a bug, and get hacking!

A Much Belated Boston Summit Blog Post

Last week I returned from a great trip to Boston, which included my first experience of GNOME Boston Summit – a three-day event that was held at MIT over the Columbus Day weekend.

Boston Summit comes at the beginning of a release cycle, which makes it a good opportunity to plan ahead and think about priorities for the next release. It was for this reason that I really wanted to be at the event this year. It gave me a chance to talk to people, find out what they are interested in working on, and figure out what I should be focusing on for the next six months.

True to its billing, GNOME Summit was an unconference: we started with a blank schedule, listed what we wanted to cover, and worked from there. I enjoyed the flexible nature of the format. Having the opportunity to shuffle sessions around on each day meant that we could adjust our focus as the event progressed.
Continue reading A Much Belated Boston Summit Blog Post

GNOME OS

In my last post I described how, during this year’s GUADEC, members of the GNOME community came together to plan where the project could go in the next 18 months or so. The slides from Xan and Juanjo’s talk give some of the background to those discussions. We took copious notes during the planning sessions that were held; these will all be available online soon, so you can get a more detailed picture if you want one. In what follows I’ll try to give a bit an overview.

But first, a clarification. The idea of GNOME OS has been around for a couple of years, and there has been a fair amount of confusion about what it means. Some people seem to have assumed that GNOME OS is an effort to replace distributions, so let me be clear: that is not the case. While the creation of a standalone GNOME OS install does feature as a part of our plans, this is primarily intended as a platform for testing and development. In actual fact, all of the improvements that we hope to make through the GNOME OS initiative will directly improve what the GNOME project is able to offer distributions.

Many of the things that we want to do as a part of GNOME OS are old ideas that have been around in the GNOME project for a really long time. The aspirations that are driving this process include things like providing a better experience for application developers, automated testing, sandboxed applications and broad hardware compatibility. While each of these goals could be pursued independently, there are enough interconnections between them to make a holistic plan worthwhile. Yes we could call the initiative something else, but GNOME OS has stuck, and it kinda fits (as I hope to explain a bit better below).

We’re setting out to drain swamps, fix the most glaring issues in our ecosystem, and establish a new model for the future. We don’t know whether we’ll succeed, but there are enough people in our community who care about these issues that we just might be able to do it. The best part is: you can help.
Continue reading GNOME OS

An Awesome GUADEC and a Bright Future

This year’s GUADEC was one of the best that I have ever attended. I have never seen the GNOME community so energised. New contributors were more visible than ever before, and all of them were fantastically enthusiastic and motivated. It is always a wonderful experience to see newcomers be inspired by our community. Our outreach efforts are more successful than ever.

One of the things that has made this year’s GUADEC stand out is the big strides we have made to set goals for the medium and long-term. There is no denying that our project faces challenges; I think this is true for many actors in what we call the desktop space. What is exciting is that the GNOME community is coming together to face those challenges. More details will emerge in the coming weeks, but we have started initiatives here that address a number of significant issues, such as making it easy to develop applications for GNOME, doing more to test the core UX and ensure quality, and we have discussed how fill in the missing pieces in our plans for the GNOME 3 user experience.
Continue reading An Awesome GUADEC and a Bright Future