Category: Work

CHI 2008

Back in Dublin after spending last week at CHI 2008 in Florence. I posted a few entries over on Sun’s design blog while I was there: [Day 1] [Day 2] [Day 3] [Day 4]

Main takeaways of GNOME interest, in no particular order:

  • I/we really need to get the HIG moving again, preferably in a less monolithic fashion
  • It will be really cool to see what sort of insight the InGimp data analysis gives us, and whether it would be feasible/worthwhile transferring the idea to GNOME.
  • There still really aren’t many people working on open source usability projects, even in academia :/

Sun’s Web App UI Guidelines

Cool to see Sun’s Web App UI Guidelines finally go public. As Chip Alexander says,:

They are a set of building blocks for web applications that have been designed by user interface specialists, thoroughly thought through and usability tested. They can be used for developing full web applications, allowing designers and developers to focus on their application’s particular needs rather than the design of all the controls and elements inside.

The corresponding Woodstock toolkit for which they were written has been available under an open source (CDDL) licence for a while, but of course the guidelines themselves can be applied to any web app. (They do have a bit of a system administration app slant, though, for obvious reasons.)

VMware 1, Parallels 0

I’d been using Parallels 3.0 for the past few weeks to run SXDE 2 on my MacBook Pro, but started having problems when I upgraded to Solaris Nevada build 69– the X server wouldn’t start any more, and I just couldn’t get it going at all.I took the opportunity to try out the VMware Fusion Beta instead, and so far it’s the clear winner.

It does feel a trifle slower than Parallels (even with debugging turned off), and its snapshots aren’t as flexible, only allowing one per VM. But its VM tools for Solaris are way ahead of Parallels’ non-existent offering– clock sync, on-the-fly desktop resize, copy/paste/drag+drop from Solaris <-> OS X… nice. (Haven’t figured out if shared folders are supposed to work on Solaris yet or not– the settings are available which suggest they should, but the folders I’ve nominated don’t show up anywhere obvious, so I’m guessing they don’t.)

Assuming it’s just as happy at full screen on my Sun 24″ display when I get into the office, I’ll be sticking in the VMware camp for now.

Edit: Oh, and did I mention that Solaris sound and networking work out-of-the-box on VMware too…?

Sun patch day: Wednesday

Inspired (partly) by some recent gripes about some of the patches Sun are applying to GNOME for Solaris, Laca has announced our first community patch day this coming Wednesday:

The desktop team at Sun would like to invite you all to a Sun-patch day. The goal of the patch day is to go through all Sun’s GNOME (JDS) patches and: – push the less controversial ones upstream – a great opportunity to vent your frustration about all the crack that may have slipped in – start a discussion about the more controversial patches.

Where: irc://irc.gnome.org#sun-patches

When: Wednesday, July 11th.

You can read Laca’s full announcement here.

Hey Presto!

Or, “Solaris printing finally makes it into the 21st century”.Check out Norm’s screencast of the first working bits of the automatic printer detection and config system that we’re working on for OpenSolaris. Only works for local USB printers right now, but loads more functionality to come over the next few months. Kudos to the printing team– Norm, Wendy (who doesn’t have a blog, AFAIK), Ghee and Halton*– for finally nailing one of the most-neglected parts of the Solaris user experience.

*Okay, so I’ve been helping a bit too…

Och-aye-demy

Just noticed that KDE’s Akademy conference is taking place in my old stomping ground of Strathyclyde University’s Computer Science Department in Glasgow… pity there are no usability sessions on the schedule, might have been tempted to gatecrash for nostalgia’s sake :)

Back in my day (1989-93), the Graham Hills building was called Marland House (we’d just bought it off BT), and its main function was to house a lab full of QLs that Sinclair had donated. Despite the stories in the press at the time, every student didn’t get one to take home– AFAIK they all stayed in the lab, and all we ever did with them was our 68k assembly language assignments (as set by Duncan Smeed, who’s probably still setting them today…)

The top few floors of the Livingstone Tower, on the other hand, housed (as they still do) the staff offices and the 3rd and 4th year computer lab, which at the time had just been kitted out with smart new Sun terminals (ELCs, IIRC– which looking back at them now were the forerunner of Sun Rays, I guess). Little did I know then…

Holiday catchup

So, first blog of 2007… bliadhna mhath ur, and all that.

It was a fairly quiet break for us this year, at least in terms of travelling and seeing family– we did neither, apart from a one-night spa break up the road at the Johnstownhouse Marriot in Enfield. (The food there really is gorgeous.)

We were out and about around town a bit though… went to see Jason Byrne on December 23rd, and we took in Casino Royale, Flushed Away, Happy Feet and Deja Vu at the cinema (mostly for free– thanks Curly!)

Work-wise, I’m trying out a Sun Ray 2 at home for the first time this week… the technology is certainly impressive, although it remains to be seen whether it’ll oust my laptop as my working-at-home tool of choice. It would probably be more useful if I had one on my desk at work as well, to get the full benefit of session mobility– maybe it’s time to retire my old Ultra 10….