Shane Fagan » evolution email client http://shanefagan.com A blog about Ubuntu, techonlogy, random stuff and opinions Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:44:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Evolution http://shanefagan.com/2009/09/12/evolution/ http://shanefagan.com/2009/09/12/evolution/#comments Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:48:52 +0000 Shane http://shanefagan.com/?p=410 Continue reading →]]> I complained a while back about evolution being ugly but I fiddled with the UI a little. Nothing that requires any programming just changing stuff from the view options.

Here is the default evolution on a fresh install of ubuntu.
Default Evolution

Here is evolution after I changed stuff.
Simple evolution

I much prefer the simpler version. The only real difference is that I right click to do stuff (like mark as spam).

]]> http://shanefagan.com/2009/09/12/evolution/feed/ 9 Gnome 3.0 http://shanefagan.com/2009/04/13/gnome-30/ http://shanefagan.com/2009/04/13/gnome-30/#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:07:32 +0000 Shane http://shanefagan.wordpress.com/?p=129 Continue reading →]]> I recently heard that gnome are informally planing the 3.0 release. Before I start I just want to say I love gnome. KDE is nice but gnome is just stable and very easy to use.
My ideas are:
1. Making a gnome media player like ITunes or windows media player. I know that totem satisfies this slightly but the lack of a library makes it a little irritating to play songs. Maybe just merge rhythmbox and totem.
2. Implementing file/folder tags in nautilus.
3. Make it easier to access files without using nautilus. Searching through folders for files using nautilus is slow. We can make it easier.
4. Shaking up the desktop look. Better themes, nicer effects. Stuff that makes the desktop user go wow. (kde focused on a fresh cool look for 4.0 and we should do the same for gnome 3.0) Ubuntu netbook remix is a good example of an easy to use good looking interface.
5. Finding new things to do with the workplace switcher. At the moment its just good for organisation. Different desktop backrounds maybe to help differentiate. Different workplaces can do different things like one for office, one for internet programs like firefox but making it easy to control different processes on different workspaces is what I want.
6. Web services integration. I previously blogged about using the deskbar applet to update my twitter. We can do a lot more. Maybe writing new blog posts, getting people’s twits delivered to the desktop etc.
7. An overhaul of evolution. This is a big one for me. Evolution is the default email client and it is quite poor in terms of UI and usability. Examples of this are clear when writing a new email and you right click to paste in something and it doesn’t work. Maybe have evolution dropping into the notification area would be nice. The dictionary is also not very good when one compares it to firefox. Evolution just simply doesn’t compare to the other email clients on the market.

These are just a few ideas we definitely can do better. I think that windows 7 and probably future versions of windows wont be able to keep up if we can keep up with the newest trends. Computing is slowly moving to a more web based environment, gnome can adapt to this change positively and blur the lines between desktop and the web (clouds too)

Update: I did some googling and I found a plan for gnome 3.0
http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero/Plan

Update 2: Gnome-shell is very interesting and it fixes some of what I was complaining about. It makes multiple workspaces useful but it may make things slightly complicated. That solves Point 5.
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell
Also gnome-Zeitgeist solves Points 2 and 3.
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeZeitgeist

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