[Design-team] Fedora 12 Design Schedule

[Máirín Duffy]

On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 12:53 -0400, William Jon McCann wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 4:33 PM, John Poelstra<poelstra at redhat.com> wrote:
> ...
> > For ease of reference here is the list:
> > Fullscreen splash for syslinux
> > Fullscreen grub splash
> > Square splash for anaconda and firstboot
> > Anaconda horizontal header
> > Firstboot vertical header
> > Package Splash Screens
> 
> For the desktop spin I don't think we want to continue making new
> versions of these each release.  Especially now that we have a
> plymouth screen that isn't rethemed every release I think we can just
> make one and reuse it from now on.  Or maybe we don't need some of
> these at all.

The plymouth / startup splash is not mentioned in the above quoted list.

We need a syslinux and a grub splash. The syslinux splash is the first
thing a user sees when they pop a live CD or usb key in their system.
When this looks very nice, it helps us give a good first impression,
quite frequently to first-time Fedora users as many try Fedora out from
live media first. The grub splash shows up I think in particular
scenarios - we had talked about removing it entirely for F11 but found
out there are some cases where it pops up and something is needed. I am
sorry that I cannot remember them off the top of my head but you might
find them in the list archives around the F10 beta freeze.

We could just make generic headers for anaconda and firstboot, but then
it becomes more difficult to know what you're actually installing while
you're installing it. I think it's good for the different versions to be
distinctive because then you have a better idea of what it is you are
looking at. We do not mind making these splashes every release. Also, to
be clear, what I'm talking about is the vertical banner in first boot
and the horizontal top banner in anaconda.The 'fedora' splash used in
both anaconda and firstboot has been the same since F8 though. It just
has the Fedora logo and packages. 

> > kdm login screen theme
> 
> We don't need this for the desktop spin.

This schedule is for the design team, not for the desktop spin. The KDE
spin does need this splash, so we help produce it for them. We work on
designs for all of Fedora, all spins including KDE and Electronics Lab
and EDU, as well as the main website and various web applications.
> 
> > gnome splash screen
> > kde splash screen
> > gnome screensaver lock dialog
> 
> Not used in the desktop spin.

These are prioritized extremely low. We usually don't do these until the
last minute when we get complains about them missing - and whether or
not they get done is up to the time/interest of the designers around at
the time. There are in fact many users who go into gconf and turn on the
GNOME splash screen. I really don't understand why, but the graphic is
easy enough to do for them.
> 
> > Start Alpha Freeze
> > Software String Freeze
> > Create Alpha Website Banner
> > Alpha Release Readiness Meeting
> > Alpha Public Availability
> 
> Not relevant to the desktop spin.

These are important to the design team, which is why they are on the
design team schedule.
> 
> I still think, for now, it makes sense to create a new desktop
> background for each release.  But it would be great if we can
> implement Window 7 style slideshows as well.  Also, I'm still very
> skeptical about the value of relying on the internal code name for the
> release to determine the visual design of the wallpaper.

It would definitely be nice if a user could say choose their Pictures
folder or a subfolder of their pictures folder and choose to make a
slideshow of that. That would be a great feature. Unfortunately we are
mostly just artists and not able to implement such a feature. If it's
something you're interested in writing, can we help with mockups and
such?

Let us worry about whether or not the release's public codename is a
good basis for the wallpaper design. We are trying it to see if it
works. It certainly led to nice artwork for F10, whether or not the way
there was more or less rocky than we intended.

~m