Hi everyone,
I am a big fan of the Xfce spin, so much so that I use it as my regular desktop and even think it could be a contender for replacing GNOME as the default Fedora desktop (one can dream :-)) I have some experience in software usability and I would like to suggest some small changes that I think will make the Fedora 24 Xfce spin work better out of the box.
As presentation aid, please find these two screenshots: Current Xfce spin default desktop: https://spins.fedoraproject.org/static/images/screenshots/screenshot-xfce.jp... Suggested Xfce spin default desktop: http://i.imgur.com/XUllDME.jpg
Explanations for the differences:
1) Removing the "dock" at the bottom: The dock takes up enough screen space to interfere with the Anaconda installer during the Fedora installation process from LiveUSB. This isn't obvious in the screenshot from the website due to the high screen resolution, but has been my experience every time I install Fedora on a netbook or a laptop with a smaller resolution. It also panders more to people already familiar with OS X, which is actually, statistically, a group far less likely to be the one migrating to Fedora.
2) Replace the two bars with a unified bar at the bottom: The main reason people still choose Xfce over GNOME is that it sticks to the traditional desktop metaphor. As such, we should be playing to its strengths. My suggestion illustrates a classic desktop style bottom taskbar, notification area, launchers for common applications (these can be changed, the screenshot shows my personal settings for the launchers), etc. By adopting this style, we are maximizing the efficiency in which screen space is used (helping solve problems illustrated in (1)) while at the same time making the desktop more familiar to newcomers and utilizing more of Xfce's strengths. If you like, we can also add a Workspaces panel item to the left of the notifications area.
3) Replace the Xfce Applications Menu icon with the Fedora logo: Self-explanatory, aids with better branding integration, makes the OS more cohesive, looks good.
4) Re-include blueman in the default installation: Right now, Fedora Xfce Desktop doesn't have any sort of Bluetooth management functionality out of the box. This is an oversight that can easily be fixed by shipping with either blueman or xfce-bluetooth packaged by default in Fedora 24.
I strongly think these changes will make Fedora Xfce Desktop 24 much better. How can we get them to be included? What's the procedure?
Regards, Nadim
Hi Nadim,
I personally like your suggestions, but if I may add one more - workspace-switcher as part of the default (one and only) panel.
regards,
--eZ
340282366920938463463374607431768211456
On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 8:29 AM, Nadim Kobeissi nadim@nadim.computer wrote:
Hi everyone,
I am a big fan of the Xfce spin, so much so that I use it as my regular desktop and even think it could be a contender for replacing GNOME as the default Fedora desktop (one can dream :-)) I have some experience in software usability and I would like to suggest some small changes that I think will make the Fedora 24 Xfce spin work better out of the box.
As presentation aid, please find these two screenshots: Current Xfce spin default desktop: https://spins.fedoraproject.org/static/images/screenshots/screenshot-xfce.jp... Suggested Xfce spin default desktop: http://i.imgur.com/XUllDME.jpg
Explanations for the differences:
- Removing the "dock" at the bottom: The dock takes up enough screen
space to interfere with the Anaconda installer during the Fedora installation process from LiveUSB. This isn't obvious in the screenshot from the website due to the high screen resolution, but has been my experience every time I install Fedora on a netbook or a laptop with a smaller resolution. It also panders more to people already familiar with OS X, which is actually, statistically, a group far less likely to be the one migrating to Fedora.
- Replace the two bars with a unified bar at the bottom: The main reason
people still choose Xfce over GNOME is that it sticks to the traditional desktop metaphor. As such, we should be playing to its strengths. My suggestion illustrates a classic desktop style bottom taskbar, notification area, launchers for common applications (these can be changed, the screenshot shows my personal settings for the launchers), etc. By adopting this style, we are maximizing the efficiency in which screen space is used (helping solve problems illustrated in (1)) while at the same time making the desktop more familiar to newcomers and utilizing more of Xfce's strengths. If you like, we can also add a Workspaces panel item to the left of the notifications area.
- Replace the Xfce Applications Menu icon with the Fedora logo:
Self-explanatory, aids with better branding integration, makes the OS more cohesive, looks good.
- Re-include blueman in the default installation: Right now, Fedora Xfce
Desktop doesn't have any sort of Bluetooth management functionality out of the box. This is an oversight that can easily be fixed by shipping with either blueman or xfce-bluetooth packaged by default in Fedora 24.
I strongly think these changes will make Fedora Xfce Desktop 24 much better. How can we get them to be included? What's the procedure?
Regards, Nadim _______________________________________________ xfce mailing list xfce@lists.fedoraproject.org http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/xfce@lists.fedoraproject.org
On Thu, 24 Mar 2016 07:29:19 +0000 Nadim Kobeissi nadim@nadim.computer wrote:
Hi everyone,
Hello.
I am a big fan of the Xfce spin, so much so that I use it as my regular desktop and even think it could be a contender for replacing GNOME as the default Fedora desktop (one can dream :-))
Cool. I don't think thats ever likely to happen. ;)
I have some experience in software usability and I would like to suggest some small changes that I think will make the Fedora 24 Xfce spin work better out of the box.
As presentation aid, please find these two screenshots: Current Xfce spin default desktop: https://spins.fedoraproject.org/static/images/screenshots/screenshot-xfce.jp... Suggested Xfce spin default desktop: http://i.imgur.com/XUllDME.jpg
Explanations for the differences:
- Removing the "dock" at the bottom: The dock takes up enough screen
space to interfere with the Anaconda installer during the Fedora installation process from LiveUSB. This isn't obvious in the screenshot from the website due to the high screen resolution, but has been my experience every time I install Fedora on a netbook or a laptop with a smaller resolution. It also panders more to people already familiar with OS X, which is actually, statistically, a group far less likely to be the one migrating to Fedora.
- Replace the two bars with a unified bar at the bottom: The main
reason people still choose Xfce over GNOME is that it sticks to the traditional desktop metaphor. As such, we should be playing to its strengths. My suggestion illustrates a classic desktop style bottom taskbar, notification area, launchers for common applications (these can be changed, the screenshot shows my personal settings for the launchers), etc. By adopting this style, we are maximizing the efficiency in which screen space is used (helping solve problems illustrated in (1)) while at the same time making the desktop more familiar to newcomers and utilizing more of Xfce's strengths. If you like, we can also add a Workspaces panel item to the left of the notifications area.
So we have had these sorts of discussions in the past.
In the past we have just left things as the upstream Xfce default because everyone has their own opinions of whats best for them and it's very easy to customize things from a simple starting point.
I do agree that the bottom dock interfering with the installer is something of concern though. Do you know at what resolution that happens?
- Replace the Xfce Applications Menu icon with the Fedora logo:
Self-explanatory, aids with better branding integration, makes the OS more cohesive, looks good.
We had this at one point, but we dropped it because it's not friendly to remixers and we don't want to ship a fedora logo in the Xfce packages.
If someone can come up with a way to use the Fedora logo if fedora-logos package is installed and a generic logo if generic-logos is installed that would be great.
- Re-include blueman in the default installation: Right now, Fedora
Xfce Desktop doesn't have any sort of Bluetooth management functionality out of the box. This is an oversight that can easily be fixed by shipping with either blueman or xfce-bluetooth packaged by default in Fedora 24.
Already done a few weeks ago.
I strongly think these changes will make Fedora Xfce Desktop 24 much better. How can we get them to be included? What's the procedure?
Gain consensus on the list and/or convince people with commits to commit your changes. ;)
kevin
On 03/24/2016 08:45 AM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
- Replace the two bars with a unified bar at the bottom: The main
reason people still choose Xfce over GNOME is that it sticks to the traditional desktop metaphor. As such, we should be playing to its strengths. My suggestion illustrates a classic desktop style bottom taskbar, notification area, launchers for common applications (these can be changed, the screenshot shows my personal settings for the launchers), etc. By adopting this style, we are maximizing the efficiency in which screen space is used (helping solve problems illustrated in (1)) while at the same time making the desktop more familiar to newcomers and utilizing more of Xfce's strengths. If you like, we can also add a Workspaces panel item to the left of the notifications area.
So we have had these sorts of discussions in the past.
In the past we have just left things as the upstream Xfce default because everyone has their own opinions of whats best for them and it's very easy to customize things from a simple starting point.
I am personally in favor of leaving things as they are setup by upstream. As it stands, Xfce is fairly easy to configure anyway (although might be slightly daunting).
An alternative to setting up a default would be to include multiple configurations in the Xfpanel-switch - which we are including by default in the live images.
I would suggest taking a look at the available configs for xfpanel-switch. If there are suggestions, I am open to including those in the package.
I do agree that the bottom dock interfering with the installer is something of concern though. Do you know at what resolution that happens?
I remmeber seeing this at 1280x800 on a VM I think ...
-
Ernedin Zajko -
Kevin Fenzi -
Mukundan Ragavan -
Nadim Kobeissi