http://www.osnews.com/story/7916/Mini-Report_from_LinuxWorld_Expo_Day_1 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:07:49 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? har har Tue, 03 Aug 2004 22:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I hope it was better than the few I went to over the last couple of years. I admit, I went mostly for the free swag, but would have liked to seen more desktop/home user stuff. It was mostly aimed at businesses, nothing really for the desktop/home user. Of course I'd still go for more free stuff Tue, 03 Aug 2004 23:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Matthias Ettrich talked to us about KDE, freedesktop.org and the need for a unified HIG.

Absolutely. KDE really does need a real HIG (beyond the current loose guidelines). I absolutely agree that it needs to be a "high-level" HIG, because a lot of the pixel-level details should be taken care of automatically by the toolkit. I hope something like this happens, but I'm not optimistic. For an HIG to work, there must be some general concensus by the project that an HIG is a desirable feature. Right now, there seems to be a concensus that "usability is important" but that's a truism, not something on which action can be taken. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? So Microsoft decided not to attend LinuxWorld this time or did they? Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Nope. http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/events/12SFO04A/exposition/ex... Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I believe there will be a lot of activity in the usability front from Akademy.
And if you follow kde-usability, a very nice group of people is being formed. Stay tuned. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The Novell, Ximian and SuSE booths were under the same roof at LinuxWorld. We talked with two Mono guys who showed us MonoDevelop running, and a program which is able to load the Gecko module and create a functional browser in under 35-40 lines of code.

I didn't know that the gecko module was seperated from Mozilla?

Does this mean epiphany or galeon could compile without the need for mozilla suite to be installed? Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It's C# bindings to the gecko engine that has to be already installed. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? While pixel values are not exacly needed, there needs to be something. If they want to do something like the gnome hig they need a way to make the spacing in dialogs exacly the same in every application. To be universal it would need the spacing values cannot be internal to the toolkit. They should really define some global variables for the different spacers and dictate where each spacer should be put. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I apologise I am not fully familiar with gecko. But my past understanding was that Mozilla suite needed to be installed also. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? RE: Gecko module?
By John Blink (IP: ---.smelb1.vic.optusnet.com.au)

It does. When you install mozilla you are also installing gecko. Currently there is no way to install gecko seperatly then mozilla, but this will probably take place around mozilla 2.0 or something like that in the semi-far future.
So while epiphany/galeon/mono bindings only use gecko and dont use mozilla, currently they come installed as one. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 01:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Okay thanks for clearing that up Wed, 04 Aug 2004 01:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Those are great pictures. Eugenia, what digital camera did Jean-Baptiste use? Thanks. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 02:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Camera: Canon 10D
Lens: Canon 17-40/4L
Flash: Canon 420EX with Lumiquest Pocket Bouncer

For the gory details, this was shot at ISO 400, 1/90 f/5.6, with -1 stop of flash exposure compensation. Metered ambient light was between 1/20 and 1/45 at f/5.6 depending on the location. In retrospect I should probably have shot at ISO 800. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 03:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I would have liked to bee there to take a look at the Lycoris and Xandros booths, I'm saving up for a copy of Desktop/LX 1.4 deluxe but if Xandros has some interesting new developer tools (unless I misread something here) I might try their ditribution again.

Does anyone know where I could find better coverage of the event, especially the Lycoris and Xandros booths.

Thanks. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 05:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What exactly do you want to know? Wed, 04 Aug 2004 05:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? How are the Free Software Projects doing? How big was their pavillion compared to the whole exhibition? Wed, 04 Aug 2004 05:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Isn't it funny that the new version of their interface guidelines says to avoid icons depicting only hands or feet but their project logo shows a feet? Wed, 04 Aug 2004 05:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Free Software Foundation shows in one of the pictures. It was 2 people on the .org Pavillion, a very small booth. I didn't talk to them, because I only stayed in the expo for 1.5 hours so I had to hand-pick the people I talked to. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 06:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Button order and pixel spacing are details of an
> implementation, they are styling issues and adhere to
> personal usage patterns based on ones' experience. I am
> looking more for a HIG that really guides you on how to
> create usable applications",

Matthias, you are completely right! And I'm sure that aKademy with its hundreds of KDE developers being present on one single spot will be a great and exciting chance to start such an effort. I'd like to remind people that the first KDE usability style guide was created during the KDE II meeting in 1999 which served as one of the sources for the Gnome HIG. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 06:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Was Lindows there?

Probably not, their keeping quiet on Linspire 5 and the upcoming business version. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 07:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? BTW: Will Eugenia be present at aKademy? Wed, 04 Aug 2004 08:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I am afraid not (for various reasons). Wed, 04 Aug 2004 08:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Release was supposed to be Q2 2004, but has since been pushed back to Q3. Is it coming? Is it on display there? What ipaqs (ver no.???) will they support? Wed, 04 Aug 2004 08:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Actually the first (very minimal) guidelines were created by me for KDE 1. I think this was even before the first KDE I conference. Here's a link via archive.org.
http://web.archive.org/web/19981202200616/developer.kde.org/kdestd/... Wed, 04 Aug 2004 12:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The thing is, KDE really doesn't need a pixel-level HIG, which is what a lot of the Gnome HIG actually is. KDE dialogs, menus, widgets, etc. all inherit from the KDE and QT classes anyway, so the drawing and response aspects are dealt with by the toolkit and the KDE extensions.

As a developer, I just ask for a menu bar, define which menus I want, and their entries. If it is better to have a two pixel dead border around a menu, rather than 3px, then that can be dealt with by KDE and QT, not me as a developer. And if anyone eventually decides that 3px is actually better, then it can be changed back in KDE, automatically changing the way *all* applications draw menus.

This is similarly important in the cases of things like toolbar icon text, where some people like it, and some don't. A quick KDE switch in the control panel, and both sets of users can be happy, and the application developer doesn't even need to think about it, because the libraries do it for him/her.

Which is why KDE and QT really don't need a pixel-level HIG, and Matthias is right that some higher-level guidelines on design are more helpful. The KDE development guidelines help quite a bit, but a comprehensive usability starter text book that can give good tips to developers for all platforms and environments would be a real boon to all computer science. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 15:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Sorry I misread the article, I thought Xandros was rolling out their own developer tools but it turns out it was just another version of their distribution.

I would like to see a picture of the screen on the Lycoris computer seen in one of the pictures though, I have not found any screenshots of Desktop/LX 1.4 anywhere and I'm considering buying a copy.

Thanks. Wed, 04 Aug 2004 20:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Browse through the sneak peeks - http://www.lycoris.com/sneakpeek/ - and you'll see plenty. Thu, 05 Aug 2004 08:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments