GnomeUserInterface

Revision 13 as of 2005-11-06 14:03:39

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Summary

The UbuntuExpress installer appears as a window on the live CD desktop. It asks for language, keyboard layout, your name, login name, password, the computer's name, your location and timezone, and partitioning details. The interface is written in Python, invoking backend routines to act on your choices.

Rationale

Use cases

Scope

Since we'll be doing a Qt-based interface as well for KubuntuExpress, the user interface must be cleanly separated from the functional installer backend. The [http://interactors.coop/~trunks/installer/ Guadalinex installer] already does this quite well, but both the front end and the back end need significant work to meet our requirements.

Design

Installation experience is theater. The installer must wow reviewers, and give everyone a good impression of the system they are about to use.

Invocation and overall design

The Live CD desktop shall contain an "Install Ubuntu Permanently" icon, consisting of an arrow overlaid on the Ubuntu logo. If there are any other icons on the desktop, the installation icon shall be the last one.

attachment:overall.jpg

The installation window is not full screen, but just big enough to show the largest page (the partitioning tool). The window has the title "Install Ubuntu", and is not resizable.

At the bottom right of the window is a pair of buttons, "◀ Back" (text left-aligned) and "Next ▶" (text right-aligned). At the first step, "◀ Back" is replaced by "Cancel" (text centered, with no icon); at the last step, "Next ▶" is replaced by "Install" (text centered, with no icon). These wording changes do not cause the buttons to jump about; they are wide enough for either wording at all times.

Welcome

The first page of the installer lets you choose your preferred language, for the installation itself and for your Ubuntu account. On x86, this defaults to the language choice that was made in the bootloader; otherwise, it defaults to English. This page also displays a welcome message and explanatory blurb in the selected language, updated live as the selection changes. (This eliminates the appearance of wasting time if you did choose the appropriate language in the bootloader.)

attachment:language.jpg

Future work: "To use accessibility features while installing, press the Space key now."

Keyboard layout

The next step is asking for the keymap, so that answers to later questions can be typed successfully.

attachment:keyboard.jpg

attachment:keyboard-guess.jpg

Personal information

attachment:personal.jpg

Until the login name field is first focused, it has a dyanmically updated value equal to the first word in the person's name, converted to lower case.

Future work: "Who will be using this computer?" -- multiple names at once, to encourage use of individual accounts.

Computer name

attachment:computer-name.jpg

This defaults to the hostname from DHCP/DNS if available, or "ubuntu" otherwise.

Initially, the field is restricted to ASCII characters. The name is used as-is for Avahi configuration, and a normalized version is used as the hostname. The hostname has spaces converted to dashes, and other punctuation stripped; this conversion is presented live during the input.

Future work: Provide some way of letting people enter the hostname manually.

Location

attachment:location.jpg

At a minimum, the map functions identically to that in the "Time zone" dialog of Gnome's "Time and Date" control panel.

Enhancements if there is time (for both the installer, and the "Time and Date" control panel itself):

  • The map should not zoom in. The zooming is disconcerting, it's not particularly useful, and it's hard to work out how to zoom out again.

  • Selecting a place in a particular timezone should highlight the whole area of the world that shares that timezone.

  • The map should behave like a single-selection listbox: mousing down should highlight the selected timezone (and update the values of the controls underneath), and dragging should continue visibly changing the selection.

Making a selection from any of the three controls -- the map, the "Nearest City:" combo box, or the "Timezone:" option menu -- changes the other two controls to match.

Partitioning

See UbuntuExpress/PartitioningTool.

Future work: Let people transfer (non-dot?) files from their home folder.

Ready to install

attachment:ready.jpg

The final page summarizes the information entered in the previous steps, in a text box from which it can be copied for printing/e-mailing/etc.

Clicking "Finish" closes the installer window, and opens a separate progress window.

Progress information

attachment:progress-demo.jpg

The progress window contains a single progress bar at all times. Initially, partitioning is allocated 10% of the size of the progress bar; this may be tweaked if it is too much for most systems or too little for most systems.

During installation of language packs, and only during that stage, a "Skip" button is present next to that text. This lets people avoid installing the language packs, without requiring a question to be answered about them.

A demo of Ubuntu's benefits (Flash v3?) is shown during the installation process, à la Windows 95. The demo is in a section with an expander (expanded by default), so it can be collapsed for people who want to see just the progress.

attachment:progress.jpg

Implementation

Since the Guadalinex team has already implemented a significant amount of this, we will use their work as a base. However, discounting minor user interface tweaks, the current code base has the problem that it duplicates both code and translatable strings from the installer, which causes problems such as desynchronisation of functionality with the installer (e.g. username/password validation in current ubuntu-express produces different results from the installer's validation code) and the loss of many existing translations of strings from the installer.

I believe that both issues can be solved by borrowing infrastructure from [:OEMInstaller:oem-config], where I had to address similar problems and did so using a debconf protocol filter: debconf-using code (e.g. installer code) can be run unmodified inside a wrapper that runs custom user interface code rather than a standard debconf frontend, and translated strings can be extracted directly from the debconf database. -- ColinWatson

Aside from that, a quick glance over the Guadalinex code suggests that its user interface has reasonably good separation between frontend and backend: the frontend asks all questions up-front and then runs widget-set-independent backend code that feeds answers into the debconf database and performs the installation proper. (Integration with oem-config may suggest answers reaching the debconf database while the frontend is running, but that's OK.)

Code

  • Move debconffilter from oem-config into debconf proper.

Discussion

MatthewPaulThomas:

  • Using a non-fullscreen window for installing an entire operating system may be handy, but it also seems unusually understated. It's possible that this will be more disconcerting than convenient for most people.
  • A demo of Ubuntu's benefits would make in the installer if it was full-screen, but while it's just another window, why not make the demo a separate program that people can run independently of the installer instead?
    • => Why not both. Have it play during install, and allow people to watch it from the livecd as well, to get a feel of the system. -> pop up a notify balloon about a "feature introduction/preview"?