DesktopGoalsSpec

Summary

UI improvements in the Xubuntu Desktop we may do for Edgy.

Rationale

Make Xubuntu's UI simpler more intuitive and more efficient

Use cases

Ubuntu users try out Xubuntu and while they appreciate the speed they find the UI cluttered and way less polished than Gnome's

Windows users try out Xubuntu and find that the handling of desktop icons needs some more love

Scope

Generic changes to the core Xfce apps to make them friendlier

Design

Implementation

Some ideas:

  • Make apps/places/system menu
  • Free-moving of panel plugins like in gnome.
  • DnD from menu to panel
  • Simplify menu layout
  • Support laptop keys for mixer/sleep via HAL
  • Thunar features (samba browsing, trash support)
  • Make xfdesktop XDG compliant

These need to be done preferably against upstream code and pushed there. They are in feature freeze though so we may only have some ubuntu specific patches.

Code

Data preservation and migration

  • If freely movable panel applets are implemented there's a good chance the panel config file format is going to

be incompatible with the current one, because of the need to store applet positions.

Outstanding issues

  • None of this is written yet and it takes quite some resources to do without Xfce upstream working on it too.

We should ask what users would like most and prioritize accordingly.

BoF agenda and discussion

We went over these issues and decided to present them to Xfce upstream and ask their opinion on how and which of them could be best implemented in the edgy timeframe, with little duplication on the two projects sides and so that it benefits Xfce in general as well.

CategorySpec

Xubuntu/Roadmap/Specifications/Edgy/DesktopGoalsSpec (last edited 2012-03-25 00:08:16 by nblzone-227-162)