The Decision on appletstrip vs Contour containment (was:re orging of plasma mobile repository)

[Fania Jöck]

Hi,

I would suggest to make a confcall on that subject (interface and 
interaction wise, merge with Contour...), I think thats way easier than 
discuss in text...
How about next tuesday, at 11am? Or afternoon 2pm?

Cheerio,
Fania

Am 12.07.2011 23:25, schrieb Marco Martin:
> Hi all,
>
> as everybody knows, right now we have a quite odd situation that we
> have at the moment what it looks like two different plasma workspace
> for the tabet, since what starts with plasma-tablet loads a workspace
> with applet strips as main screen for the activities
>
> plasma-contour has the main contour containment, is focused on
> resource icons instead, but capability to put plasmoids will come as
> well.
>
> considered that a) this gives an impression of a not clear direction
> and b) we don't have so much resources to do one interface, let alone
> two ;)
>
> that said, the two main containments serve well two very different
> kinds of scenarios:
>
> * the contour one serves better the concept of "activity", what i'm
> doing now, that is more around files, contacts, running applications,
> whatever. it also serves pretty well as container for plasmoids that
> can be very specific for a task (classical example, weather forecast
> in a trip planning activity)
>
> * the applet strip serves in a much better way a quite different use
> case: applets that give me informations about news, social networking
> and whatever, this goes better there because a) it's not really
> attached to an activity, i just want to glance at twitter ;) and b)
> for a pure ui point of view, the contour ontainment has vertical
> scrolling, and all of those plasmoid have vertical scrolling as well,
> so they work only on a surface with no or horizontal scrolling. the
> contour containment could be adapted, but would require a redesign of
> the ui (and there would always be the reason a)
>
> and let's not forget the web dashboard containment, another kind of
> main screen. also letting the user choose the kind of containment
> while is fine on the desktop, sounds quite confusing on a mobile
> ideally simpler environment.
>
> so, after talking about it with Aaron and Sebastian for a loong time,
> that's the decision we came with:
>
> * we will have a single, only one tablet user interface, at that will
> be the contour ux
> * the appletstrip is something different, that something different could be:
>      * a separate application, something that is even launched by hand
> from the user, and will have a default set of widgets: at least rss
> feed and identica
>      * a separate screen in the tablet ui, almost identical as the sal
> now in plasma-tablet: a panel that is dragged from the bottom
>
> in both cases there will be only one set, not influenced by activities
>
> technically, the second option is way easier to achieve, but i'm
> concerned that the tablet ui becomes way too complex (both in user
> interaction and memory consumption)  it has waay too much chrome going
> on into it already ;)
>
> the second solution would instead be a bit longer to achieve (needs a
> plasma shell that would take i guess 3-4 days to write) take more
> memory when everything is running, but stoppable by the user.
>
> i lean towards the second solution, but since the first is very easy
> to do i can start with that one so can be tested (and eventually kept
> or transitioned to the second).
>
> so the bottom line, and most important thing is that there would  be
> only a single tablet ui left.
> i would also move the main contour containment in the plasma mobile
> repo, to make it very easy to package: since the balsam image wants to
> ship with more stable stuff, the recommendation screen would remain in
> the contour repo (and not installed) while the contour activity screen
> would instead be picked (and that one is working well enough nowdays,
> since receives ~90% of development time ;)
>
> ideas/comments?
>
> Cheers,
> Marco Martin
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-- 
Fania Jöck
Interaction Designer

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