E17 is maturing, and the TODO that needs to be completed for its release is shrinking. Desktop icons are now working in E17 cvs, and you can use drag and drop between the file manager and the desktop. “Icons on the desktop. A work in progress. you will need ~/Desktop to exist with stuff in it. i suggest copying some of the favorites files over (home.desktop etc.).” There’s even a screenshot.
when looking at the screenshot on page http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/55293658/
the screenshot contains an gmail account with lots of reveiled email adresses. is that so wise to have them visible? i do not think so.
I’m pretty sure that e-devel is a public list, so no pricacy harmed there. His email is another issue, but I don’t think spambots will implement OCR anytime soon. Maybe he is related to the Mirc-developer?
Anyway, back on track, its allways nice to see a new feature in E17. Is there any desktop left without icons these days? KDE, Gnome, XFCE, E17. They all have it.
There are actually several window managers that do not have desktop icons. Fluxbox, OpenBox, DWM…
I currently use DWM and for “minimalist” users, this is just perfect.
Check it out: http://www.suckless.org/wiki/dwm
Like them or not, this is a feature long waited for.
Even though I don’t use them often, it’s nice to have em around. Even if it’s just for the pretty icons. *grins*
Thanks E team!
Hey, notice that E17 does support “animated icons” (edje files that happen to be icons)
Evolution has never really been my favorite but e17 is great. I would even go so far as to saying that it is one of the more innovative desktop managers in the OSS community. The progress is in total contrast to what’s going on with gnome and this is simply amazing considering the relatively small number or developers. I can’t wait for the final release of e17 …
Yeah it’s amazing, you got icons on desktop in 2007…
That’s exactly what I was thinking. E17 development is so slow, it’s now going in reverse!
Actually, with icons on the desktop being so inefficient to work with, it’s no surprise that it was somewhere at the bottom of the priority list.
Besides, there are already several other programs which offer these icons, independent of the window manager one uses. With these already around, the only reasons why somebody might want to implement such a feature in a window manager would be:
* in order to have them more closely integrated with the environment (see the case of Gnome — okay, Gnome is not a window manager — but you can already get the point, i.e. you can have emblems, modify permissions, write notes and/or comments regarding that program, in order to be used for accessibility reasons etc.)
* in order to implement features which are so non-standard that there would be no reason to implement them outside the window manager in question. Things like this include stuff like animated icons, icons that wobble when you move your mouse over them and so on — things nobody but the e17 developers would want to write and nobody but e17 users would want to have.
Either way, it’s not a question of e17 being developed slowly which can be proven by the fact that icons have appeared on the desktop in 2007. They should have been long gone from the desktop for several years now.
Even XFCE didn’t get icons on the desktop till the newest 4.4 series.
The XFCE developers actually didn’t want to have icons on the desktop (it’s a usability issue). They did cave in after so many request for this “feature”. I suspect that this is happening to the E17 project too.
People only want icons on the desktop b/c they come from the Windows-land. If you really think about it – you have to minimize most of your current windows before you can get to the icons – that’s really an interruption of workflow.
“People only want icons on the desktop b/c they come from the Windows-land. If you really think about it – you have to minimize most of your current windows before you can get to the icons – that’s really an interruption of workflow.”
I admit, I’ve been a Windows user since ’97 (started with Win95, of course), so I do like icons. In the past my desktop has become a usability nightmare, though in more recent years I only have the programs I most often use on it, and arranged in a certain way. With a high enough resolution (1600×1200 in my case) and well-placed icons, however, the icons rarely get covered. Each window normally saves its position on the screen, and tends to re-open where it last was.
Still, I’ve been using Linux (Zenwalk) almost exclusively for probably around a year or more, and tend to prefer an icon-free desktop now, preferring a simple right-click anywhere or the bottom icon panel. Icons on the desktop aren’t exactly “bad,” and sometimes can be useful (I still like them on some environments). One thing’s for sure: I would never use a Windows machine without My Computer and the Recycle Bin on the desktop.
Windows’ biggest problem with desktop icons is the fact that practically every program… even system maintenance tools like disk defragmenters and disk cleanup tools (like CCleaner) install an icon to the desktop by default. That, I hate.
Even Windows by default doesn’t cover your desktop with icons anymore. Apparently there are still a lot of people out there that only use one application at a time, then close it, and click on another icon on the desktop to start the next application.
No. I want icons on the desktop because otherwise it’s a screen sized surface with zero functionality. As for interruption of workflow, I disagree too: with Exposé (or the Linux equivalent of it), a simple flick of the mouse shows me the desktop and I can even do so in the middle of a drag.
No. I want icons on the desktop because otherwise it’s a screen sized surface with zero functionality
So why just not to start some useful applications to cover that “useless” surface?
I prefer fullscreen apps (on 21″) and do not use the desktop at all.
And with Expose, you can actually double-click on one of those icons? I was under the impression that this would get you “away” from the window selecting mode, let alone the fact that with more than five or six windows around, you don’t see a thing.
Needless to say, everyone has their own option on how they use their desktops. Most of those who are used to traditional Unix desktops don’t carry anything on their desktop, because I prefer to have the entire screen available.
The bottom line is, though, that most Linux users who do not use KDE or Gnome (i.e. most of those who are not recently converted Windows users) do not use icons — which is why they were at the bottom of the priorities.
Expose on OS X has three different modes. One which shows you all your windows, one which shows you all the windows of your current app, and one which moves all the windows to the side and lets you access the desktop. In that last mode you can click on stuff on the desktop without it inactivating expose.
Personally I like to use my desktop as a scratch pad. A place to dump temporary files which I don’t intend on keeping. For example a video or pdf I intend to download, view once and then delete. Or a text file with some quick notes that will soon be irrelevant and not worth saving. But that’s just me.
Yes you can. From your “more than five or six windows” comment, I see that you are thinking of the “show all windows” mode, but that is just one of the variants of Exposé. The one I was talking about specifically moves all the windows away to show you the desktop and yo can double click on any icon, or start a drag, etc.
Definitely!
Personally I have “hot corners” configured for Exposé that trigger any of the three modes:
– Show all windows
– Show all windows only belonging the current app
– Move windows away to see the desktop
Flicking the mouse back to a corner afterwards returns to normal view.
Available for what? The icons are on the desktop, anything else will be above your desktop, it wouldn’t prevent that in any way. If you meant that you usually have the screen covered in windows so the desktop is not a good place to place things (icons) due to it being inaccessible, I highly recommend you give Exposé’s “show desktop” mode a try, it makes a huge difference (the Linux implementation has a similar mode too). It’s completely different from clicking WinXP’s show desktop icon, because it doesn’t cut your workflow at all.
edit: the quote tags seem to be broken on www4.osnews.com (?) They work fine on the classic view on http://www.osnews.com :/
Edited 2007-05-17 14:37 UTC
I find that highly amusing, since I remember Mac advocates crying foul when Win95 was released – because it incorporated the same “desktop-as-a-folder” metaphor which had been present since at least MacOS 7.x (if not earlier).
I’ve never found that particularly problematic. In Windows, there’s the “show desktop” icon in quicklaunch, or the Winkey-D keyboard command. And in any desktop system that has built-in support for virtual workspaces, you can simply switch to a workspace that doesn’t contain any open applications. And that’s not even considering things like Expose in OS X.
Yeah it’s amazing, you got icons on desktop in 2007…
I would also like to add, welcome to the year 1987. “The Apple Macintosh uses icons and a desktop metaphor to increase ease of use…”
XFCE ran into the same problem. Everyone wanted desktop icons and now they are there. I think desktop icons work for people since it gives them a comfortable feeling of being unrestricted at placing files. It is not really rational since one could easily maximize Thunar or another file manager and get even better efficiency at managing files. A lot of user interface work is like this it is a combination of function and how it feels to a user that makes it appealing. Another example of this principle is the Firefox Search box. People asked for it and love it. The Mozilla developers were against it since in the older Mozilla suite one can just press the down arrow on the location bar and get a mini search menu. Efficient but too abstract for the casual user. People wanted the box and they got the box.
Edited 2007-05-16 18:41
A lot of user interface work is like this it is a combination of function and how it feels to a user that makes it appealing.
And it’s also basic usability theory. The UI aspect is called affordance. A good UI design leverage affordance to make it’s use apparent to the user.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance
Evolution = Gnome Outlook clone, E = Enlightenment.
E basically started because the lead developer (Rasterman) didn’t like (and still doesn’t like) the way things are going in linux desktop development.
The desktop is the most useless piece of the ‘traditional’ graphical user interface. It’s so not-accessible, hidden most of the time beneath a zighora of windows.
Some kind of a sidebar with all Home-Folders directly available would probably be much better. Or am I wrong? Please elaborate.
if you used e17 – you will notice it has had a “files” menu for a long time – this has been the only way to get to the filemanager. i have been busy fixing the fm to work in list-view mode (as it’s used for the file selector, wallpaper browser, theme selector etc.). i recently worked on icon view mode that allowed arbitrary placement of icons – adding them to the desktop was incredibly trivial – just stick the fm widget on the desktop. that’s all that was needed.
icons were added because of overwhelming demand for them from users. they keep asking – so we have delivered. we have delivered in such a way that we 100% recycle the same code and technology for widgets, etc. etc.
yes it may be more usable for heavy users if the files are stuck somewhere on a “sidebar” or “panel” or “shelf” – we have had that in the ibar launcher for years already. it has been configurable by drag and drop for years. the icon-view mode for the filemanager is new. don’t like it? delete the icons. point is that the same code can power MANY uses of icons. This is simply the *MOST REQUESTED* use of them. take the feature or leave it – but it’s there because people asked for it – a LOT of them.
Except for the Home-Folders thing (I think file systems are horrible user interfaces, maybe they are useful as APIs, but not as UIs) I agree with you. My current desktop has a few important folders lined up at the edge of my screen to get a somewhat similar experience. But I gladly change them so that
1. They are tabs at the edge. Resembling menus that are available even if a window happens to be placed at the edge of the screen.
2. They would expand and let me traverse subdirs without clicking so that I can drag-and-drop stuff to them.
The fonts in Firefox are readable. The fonts in the title bar for every open window (and in the file browser showing the pictures) is just about unreadable.
When is Linux going to get some readable fonts?
>> When is Linux going to get some readable fonts?
It is up to user to grab some windows fonts :o)
maybe it has nothing to do with linux and the fact that a user has gone and chosen such a font all for themselves using configuration dialogs? because that sure is NOT the default. the default is in fact the same font you see in firefox. maybe you should not judge everything by a screenshot?
you might find this interesting: http://www.press.redhat.com/2007/05/09/liberation-fonts/ 🙂
Ugh, but isn’t that the evil Redhat company? What, they contribute free stuff all the time to linux distros? (sarcasm) For being big and evil they sure do help out a lot. 😉
Kudos to Rasterman and team on puttin’ this one to rest .. Also many thanks for the autohide feature finally being available for the shelf ..
As a user of E17 for the past 3 years its been wonderful to see it grow and mature, I feel the only thing missing now is a release or stable/dev branches so Elive and other distros can catch up.
Cheers,
the fm is one of the last major things left in the TODO. the “install wizard” (first-run wizard) is probably the last (something to help set e17 up for you quickly and guide you to a nice sane out-of-the-box config. We have lots of polishing, cleaning etc. to do. the fm is not “done”, just beginning to work. There’s a lot of config possible that is simply hidden right now.
Careful… Microsoft might posess the patent for desktop icons! Enlightenment should take them out. While they’re at it, remove windows and cursors as well… *snicker*
According to Wikipedia The Xerox STAR had icons on its desktop in 1981. Who can trust a screen shot.
Since my laptop has a very low resolution, 1024×768, I run most apps in full size windows. Even on higher resolution desktops, I tend to use everything full size (terms, browser, etc.). I simply switch from app to app using the keyboard since using the mouse make things much slower. So, I try to use it as little as possible.
I personally see the desktop as a giant panel. I have a shortcut to see the desktop (for ex: win+d) with most of my tree structure under ~/Desktop. When I press it once, all my windows are minimized and I can see what I just downloaded with firefox for example (assuming it saves files in ~/Desktop). Then I press win+D again, and I’m back where I was previously. It’s basically a way to see all your files/dirs + whatever else you want at once. And you’re not limited to a small panel since you can use the whole screen.
Between shift+tab to switch apps, win+d to toggle desktop view and multiple desktops, I really don’t need much more. I just have a small panel that shows some status applets and the running tasks. Given my use case, I’m really excited that E17 has finally made the step
People are always telling me desktop icons are a usability issue, now, I’ve tried many alternative environments, but I keep coming back to the standard desktop.
The most common argument is that they are hidden most of the time and it’s too much of a pain to use them when you have multiple programs open.
That argument is stupid and shows you don’t really understand the tools at your disposal. After all, whats so hard about flicking the mouse to the bottom of the screen and clicking “show desktop”?
Edit: “clicking” not “licking” :X
Edited 2007-05-16 19:14
And now return all of them back the way they were, and find the program you just opened.
I just have a toolbar with all the applications I regularly use right there, so I don’t even HAVE to click the ‘show desktop’ button.
After all, whats so hard about flicking the mouse to the bottom of the screen and licking “show desktop”?
Licking? Reminds of that old 80s Duran Duran song called hungry like the wolf. “I’m on a hunt, I’m on a prowl and I’m hungry for my desktop icons” (sorry).
Edited 2007-05-16 19:16
Even as someone else pointed out I wouldn’t have to keep licking my screen if I used Beryl or some such window manager. Unfortunately, ATI binary drivers lick goat, so I can’t.
Edited 2007-05-16 19:23
What an ugly UI!
Pathetic.