For the new Control Center in GNOME 3.0 (or System Settings, as it will be known), I’ve been working on a settings panel to allow people to set their timezone, date and time. This means there is a new date and time mechanism dbus service provided by gnome-settings-dameon, and a new UI to configure it with. The latest UI is available in gnome-control-center git and looks something like this:
It still needs a lot of testing and I’d also like to add support for using NTP services, although finding a method of applying this for different distributions will probably be tricky.
Looks good, but “All settings” placed there really sucks, because it takes horizontal space for almost nothing, maybe place that left to the “Apply” button?
I suppose that places in the world that are disputed by 2 different countries could be in different time zones according to different countries. Did you consider it? Where do you get the timezones map?
Exactly, it can get real messy. I remember Windows 95 had a nice clickable map back when I installed it from diskette (!) but later installs from CD didn’t have it:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.aspx
@dread knight: i think ‘all settings’ comes from the system settings, and the rest is just an embedded panel.
maybe move the dropdowns a little bit down, and then put the ‘apply’ button in line with them?
and, if I may wish for a geeky feature: UTC as a timezone? since I started to get involved with timezones and DST at work, I just wish I could stay far away from them when at home 🙂
We should write the ntp server somewhere in dconf and force the NTP daemon to read the key from there 🙂
whats the point to use extra daemon, if dbus service can just exec ntpdate utility? You can always add ntpdate as an optional dependency to your package
How about making that “All settings” a connected path bar similar to the one in Ubuntu Software Center? It would look nicer and allow more levels so you wouldn’t have to open a dialog if there are more options under a specific control center section.
@zekopeko there will never be more than one level.
@Hylke
Well it would still look prettier with the path bar.
Automatic configuration/synchronization of time/date/timezone based on time servers and geolocation, would be nice.
@Marco Barisione: indeed, consider this cautionary tale from Microsoft: .
The link you presumably pasted was empty, but I think it’s the same one as came to my mind as soon as I read this post and Marco’s reply:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.aspx
In case it doesn’t show up for me either, Google the article “Why isn’t my time zone highlighted on the world map?” from The Old New Thing.
If you pay attention for some reason the highlighted day is off-centered to the number (16). IMHO There’re other subtle design improvements that could be made.