Enrico Ros proposing a SoC project for improving the GUI

[Bart Cerneels]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 9:09 AM, Mark Kretschmann <kretschmann at kde.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 1:03 AM, Enrico Ros <enrico.ros at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tuesday 17 March 2009 20:33:43 Mark Kretschmann wrote:
>>> I assume that you have by now read our discussion about your ideas
>>> here on this list. Could you please comment on them, and decide if you
>>> would like to make an official SoC proposal?
>>>
>>> While there still is bit time left until the deadline, it would be
>>> better to discuss this earlier, so that we could reach a conclusion
>>> about this without hurrying.
>>
>> Hello Mark, hello All,
>>  yes, I've read the discussion and I've been waiting for all the pieces to
>> fall in place before committing to the Summer of code.
>>
>>  About the "still unnamed" Summer of Code project: what I want is to make
>> Amarok's interface look prettier and be faster essentially. Easy enough if you
>> have a magic wand.
>> But instead of proposing my take on the job (top-level qgraphicsview container
>> + using OpenGL where available + fx (w/shaders) + qt kinetic - (minus) plasma,
>> etc..) I'd like to know what do you guys think about a "let's make the gui
>> rock" kind of project. So this is still an "evaluating if and how..." kind of
>> mail.
>>
>> We should decide:
>>  - which are the criteria for judging the gui? how the current is rated?
>>  - do we feel the need to have "the best gui" we can have?
>>  - who should decide how to make it? (coders, designers, usabs, etc..)
>>
>> My personal opinions:
>>  When looking at today's Amarok (and I saw it made lots of progress in the
>> last months) I see a big gray area with many different type of gray, different
>> icon sizes, and the central area is corrupted [1]. What should itlook like?
>> Like the mockups floating around [2], or better: the UI should be like a
>> plugin; in this way the current gui could be kept as the default gui
>> implementation and new guis could be developed in parallel (even switched at
>> runtime).
>>  If the SOC happens for me I'd like to experiment with a new gui, like the
>> [2]. In this case I'll do a call to anybody wanting to contribute to make such
>> a thing, collect all the ideas, do the design in team and implement as much as
>> I can to have nearly the same functionality as the default gui.
>>
>> I'm open to all the kind of suggestions expecially criticism, since it helps
>> to shape my SOC proposal better ;-)
>>
>> Enrico
>>
>>
>> [1]  http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/9933/amaroklayouting1.png  - I know this
>> may be a small window, but users make no discounts, this looks broken.
>>
>> [2] http://www.kde-
>> look.org/content/show.php/A+Media+Player+for+KDE4?content=94472
>
> Well, from me this gets a thumbs up. I like your willingness to be
> flexible with the actual implementation details (even if this is
> unusual for a SoC project, but who gives a shit?), and I know that you
> are the right person to do it.
>
> Plus, I believe that we do really need an expert for polishing up our
> GUI. While I don't find the current GUI extremely bad, it certainly
> could be greatly improved. And especially for a media player the looks
> are very important (as opposed to office software or so).
>
> About the actual wording of the "official" proposal, I don't really
> care much about it. Just write it in such a way that it explains the
> intentions (the usual stuff), and don't make it too wordy. Your
> proposal is special anyway in so far that you are not a typical SoC
> student (inexperienced), but rather an expert.
>

Perhaps we should invite Enrico to our developer sprint May 1th-4th in
Berlin [1]? There will be a couple of artists already and most of the
core team. Excellent opportunity to discuss this in a high-bandwidth
way.

Bart

[1] http://www.google.com/notebook/public/11569211367747894993/BDROpQwoQmImF5PMj