Shane Fagan » gnome 3.0 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 Gnome-Zeitgeist http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/10/gnome-zeitgeist/ http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/10/gnome-zeitgeist/#comments Sun, 10 May 2009 23:20:44 +0000 Shane http://shanefagan.wordpress.com/?p=162 Continue reading →]]> Ive started contributing on gnome-zeitgeist so I decided that ill explain it.
Firstly here is the url http://zeitgeist.geekyogre.com/
and on the gnome website http://live.gnome.org/GnomeZeitgeist
And finally on Seif Lotfy’s website http://seilo.geekyogre.com
and on launchpad https://launchpad.net/gnome-zeitgeist
In a nutshell zeitgeist journals the users workload as a log of what you have done over the past few days.
So if you looked at a video, listened to a song, looked at a document zeitgeist will journal it.
Its useful if you didnt finish something, you can go back to it the next day or a few days after.
Also you can also tag and bookmark your activities, to help you find them later.
We are currently making plugins for rhythmbox, banshee and pidgin as well as fine tuning the UI.
In the future it will be integrated into Gnome-Shell and hopefully will be included in Gnome 3.0.
If you want to help drop into #gnome-zeitgeist on gimpNet.
You can grab the current development version of zeitgeist with
“bzr branch lp:gnome-zeitgeist” (Without the quotes using bazaar)

]]> http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/10/gnome-zeitgeist/feed/ 0 Follow up on my gnome 3.0 post http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/03/follow-up-on-my-gnome-30-post/ http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/03/follow-up-on-my-gnome-30-post/#comments Sun, 03 May 2009 13:36:28 +0000 Shane http://shanefagan.wordpress.com/?p=152 Continue reading →]]> I can mark a few of my points as done or at least being done as we speak.
If they replace rhythmbox and totem with banshee it would fix my point about having a unified media player like itunes or windows media player.
Gnome-Zeitgeist has file tags and makes it easier to access applications etc.
Shaking up the desktop look and feel is being tackled on a few fronts by gnome-shell and by ubuntu in recent releases.
Gnome-shell also uses multiple desktops to good effect.
My two other points aren’t being done. Id say that maybe my point about web services integration is a little ahead of its time but I think it would be good to look into. Evolution on the other hand is a nightmare in UI terms and we really should make an effort to make it better.

]]> http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/03/follow-up-on-my-gnome-30-post/feed/ 0 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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