[ge-talk] Feedback on R2 Deskbar Mockup

[Michael Phipps]

So you don't feel too lonely. :-)

First of all, thank you for thinking about UI problems and putting together 
a mockup. I have been encouraging this for years...

Thoughts -

A lot of BeOS apps didn't use custom icons. A "dock" of blocks is pretty 
non-helpful.

I like the fact that there is no wasted space. Every pixel, almost, is 
used, but not too crowded.

The color coding is an interesting approach, but "crashed" is questionable. 
I mean - generally in BeOS, dead apps are killed. Do you mean for the icon 
to stay around when the process is gone?

Sideways text is unusable. Don't know the best solution, but that isn't it.

No place here that I can see for replicants and/or the Deskbar icons (those 
tiny icons in the deskbar).

That scrollbar seems unusable - at 16x16, that would be, what, 2-3 pixels 
high? Hard to find and click.

The colors are kind of ugly, but I assume that is part of working in paint.

Adding shortcuts to deskbar is sort of interesting, but is that the right 
approach? I mean - what problem are we trying to solve? If we want to solve 
the problem that it is too hard for a user to find/get to the applications 
that he wants to start, are shortcuts the best approach?

The zsnake idea might work, but what would you use it for? To start an app? 
Find a file? It isn't a bad technique, but does the average user want to 
traverse their files that way?

Keep at it - refining ideas and coming up with new concepts...

Michael


Brian Hague wrote:
> I was hoping to get some feedback on my R2 deskbar mockup.
> 
> http://haiku-os.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=7267#7267
> 
> Please note this is not a final product (it was done in paint for goodness
> sakes!) The final product will be done with scalable graphics, AA, and much
> better fonts. Everything you see there should be able to be customized
> (colors, sizes, whatnot)
> 
> I'm looking for what the feel of the system should be, there are a lot of
> posts from me in that link that give more description than my first 
> post, so
> read on...