If you want to see how your codecs are going to be installed in Fedora 10, watch this screencast.
This automatic process relies on the user adding an external repo (as most of the formats are non-free), but that’s pretty easy.
Comments, as ever, appreciated.
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hughsie
Richard has over 10 years of experience developing open source software. He is the maintainer of GNOME Software, PackageKit, GNOME Packagekit, GNOME Power Manager, GNOME Color Manager, colord, and UPower and also contributes to many other projects and opensource standards. Richard has three main areas of interest on the free desktop, color management, package management, and power management.
Richard graduated a few years ago from the University of Surrey with a Masters in Electronics Engineering. He now works for Red Hat in the desktop group, and also manages a company selling open source calibration equipment. Richard's outside interests include taking photos and eating good food.
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Very nice :)
Minor detail though… I counted 4 differently sized windows opening (+one window resize because of text length?)
I really think packagekit suffers from “one window per technical operation”, even though there’s no difference for the user. It just makes it less smoooooooth because of flickers or draws attentention when it’s not needed.
It should open a single window and never close or open another until the operation is either done or cancelled.
“Totem Movie Player requires additional plugins
An additional plugin is required to play this content
The following plugin is required:”
Do we really need three sentences all saying exactly the same thing?
Sweetness. Like with most of the PackageKit stuff there are some minor details in the UI which can be done better, the above comments are on to something. I don’t know jack about UI so I won’t comment on that and just say I love this feature. Keep on rocking.
Hey Richard,
nice work, but where did the legal options go ? What if people want to buy correctly licensed codecs ?
Yeah, it’s weird that there are 3 sentences at the beginning saying exactly the same thing.
Could the horrifying (and uninformative for normal users) name of the package be hidden in details? Just “Plugin found. Do you wish to install it” and a “Details >” expander for geeks.
Oh and yes, why does window size change at every step? This doesn’t look good.
My impression:
The first window tells yo nothing as you are always expected to press “search”. It’s just there to modally block the player (not that anyone would like to play the next track in their playlist while waiting for the codec to install).
The second “searching” window could as well become a cluebar at the top of the player window…
…and instantly change to the “codec found [details]” cluebar that shows you the third window – “the following software is required… [install]”.
The installation itself does not need a window at all. Just change the cluebar to “downloading/installing” and tell me when it’s done.
The current situation is not only sub-optimal as it blocks the current window, it blocks all media playback as Totem (for some strange reason) insists on having only one instance open.
what happens when rpmfusion is not preinstalled? Would it be possible to direct users to something useful?
I would probably swap the “Close”-buttons to “Cancel”-buttons.
Close are used for instant apply windows.
Rahul: yes, we’re working on that now — see my Vendor.conf mail to the mailing list.
Thomas Vander Stichele: They can still use the fluendo codec store (or the ubuntu one) it’s up to the distro to define the link if nothing is found in the repos.
anonymous: I’ve fixed the window width problem, thanks.
backup: No, I guess we don’t — I’m really bad at GUIs. The good news is I accept patches :-)
It’s not bad, just redundant (and still better than my non existent GUI). Keep up the good work. :)
I suggest simply axing the second sentence.