The SkyOS Team has added window grouping to SkyOS. This decision came as a response to applications cluttering the taskbar. Similar applications will now only appear once on the taskbar, and a drop-down menu is used to access the individual instances of the applications. A screenshot of window grouping can be found at the SkyOS Website. Additionally, 10 languages are now available for most parts of SkyOS. If you are interested in translating SkyOS to a language, visit the SkyOS forums.
SkyOS Gets Window Grouping, More Languages
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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look out world here we come
But, it still need a little more blend/alpha to make the shadow looks beter. Is the window grouping optional? Because, I always hate the window grouping, which I always disabe it on Windows and Gnome. 🙂
Umm, is there any workspace switcher in SkyOS?
And I’ll keep on translating them resources to Dutch, Robert
Got a few more request for optional window grouping, so window grouping can be enabled/disabled with the theme manager now.
Thanks.
@Thom Holwerda:
Great!
More resource will come very soon!
Nice. SkyOS is really coming along. Its hard to believe its come so far in such a short ammount of time with such a small ammount of manpower. I’m really interested in trying it out for myself.
Multi-language support is important, considering the large number of people requiring non-English support.
Now if only SkyOS could leap the basic hurdles that prevent it from booting on either of my computers.
-Bob
Based on the screenshots:
I think the title text in the windows should be a few pixels higher. It seems out of place.
Thanks, fixed.
I think the font used in the left pane in the file manager should be changed to something like Tahoma, Verdana type of fonts because the “Times” doesn’t look very nice. My opinion only. I am talking about the part the part that shows the path, /boot/system. The font should be the same as the one used for the file names in the file manager or something similar.
Just looked at the OpenGL mpeg SkyOS demo movie.
In it, the user loads a movie clip using SkyOS media center. What is that cat doing to that girl?! Looks to me like she rubs some sort of jam onto herself and then lets the cat lick it off her, much to her delight if you know what I mean.
Not really demo movie material IMHO.
My only beef is the windows border. Something like plastik from KDE would look fantastic.
Keep up the great work!
Pretty sweet hobby OS, I have to say… interestingly enough, its slick and tempting in all the right places, until yT’s Zeta offering. Even has some awesome applications like Gaim. Guess commercial hobby OS’ are gonna have somer fierce competition now.
@Robert:
Uh, is that a cat fornicating with a woman in the OpenGL demo video?!
I didn’t care for the feature in WinXP, so I wonder if there is a way to turn it off.
Turn it off in SkyOS, not WinXP
“Got a few more request for optional window grouping, so window grouping can be enabled/disabled with the theme manager now.
Thanks.”
Uh, is that a cat fornicating with a woman in the OpenGL demo video?!
LOL, that looks to be an AD. A very funny one at that! Man, Robert, what ad is that?? That looks hilarious! If you guys didn’t catch it, the girls freinds are making a surprise party for her, but end up catching her with the cat!
1. Besides Enable/Disable, could I define a arbitrary grouping threshold? something like start grouping after 5 o 6 o 100 instances??
2. As I see from screenshots, when you group something the icon changes to a folder (which btw I think should be a little smaller), but I guess that if I use an application that uses a folder as its icon, things could get a little confusing. Shouldn’t the “group button” has an additional visual hint that shows it has something inside .. probably like a combo box arrow or something? Also, the popup menu with the items seems a little flat/2D, which contrasts with the nice 3D looking of the taskbar, and that popup menu seems too large, shouldn’t it be just the size of the largest current application title + margins?
3. Resizable Taskbar is a good concept, but from screenshots it seems that you always truncate text … I think text should be truncated when there is not more space to grow the taskbar, but not before that
4. I agree with the commentary about title bar text, I think should be a little higher & to the left. Have you tried to use shadow in the title text? or somethink like the “shadow” used in KDE/WinXP desktop items?
5.Left pane in you file explorer uses dark blue and black letters… I think you should change to a lighter blue or use darker blue with white letters to have a better contrast
I think that’s all I can say from the screenshot. Seems to be a good work, keep on going guys!
Although we have discussed the one about the cat before.
Hexydes I would like to know about the new videos. Will those be implemented as soon as Robert has a method of capturing the screen to a video file, instead of using a video camera?
I too noticed the folder icon for groups. If I may propose an alternative, how about, instead of changing the icon, you keep the icon as it is, and, on the other side of the task button’s text, place a small, downward-pointing , possibly recessed triangle, to signify that the button represents a group submenu?
Just an idea. Also, I have to agree with the others, making the text on the window borders centered both horizontally and vertically will make it much nicer to look at. Also, I think an ever-so-slightly bigger font size would make it much more readable.
Just my $0.02CDN
Can’t we kill this guy? he makes us other coders look slow
Slow? Heck, he makes most of us look like we’re frozen solid. The man’s a coding dynamo. And he earned major respect from me, for one, by adopting OpenBeFS for SkyOS, and applying his talents to it.
In regards to the grouping changing to folders when it gets grouped. That’s actually not what it does.
Right now, the taskbar ONLY supports the folder icon, which is why all of the applications have the folder. We will of course be fixing that before we release 5.0. Applications will keep their native icon, even when grouped.
About videos. We hope to release a new video sometime this week or early next showing some of the new features we’ve added since the last video. If we do, it will again be on the camera.
Is it me or there seems to be so many different grays that do not look good together. Taskbar is from a darker gray than applications skin; popup menu from taskbar groups & the columns inside the file explorer are both of different dark grays which do not seem to correlate with the other grays (sorry I don’t know the right word for that), neither application skin nor taskbar skin; also text in the columns lacks contrast with their black text.
Just my .02 “colones”
Actually, the taskbar and the application skin do match up pretty well. What is throwing the screenshot off a bit I think is the grouping menu, which is, I think, too dark. We will be tweaking this in the following week or so.
The website and prior OSNews coverage seems to suggest that the v.5 beta is closed, and I wouldn’t want to try a prior version when I know all kinds of great advances are about to be release any time now … but when?
SkyOS 5.0 won’t be released for a little while yet. We still have quite a lot that we want to pack in before we release.
We may open the beta test signup again, but for now it is closed, because we simply can’t make it personal enough if we take any more testers.
quote:
About videos. We hope to release a new video sometime this week or early next showing some of the new features we’ve added since the last video. If we do, it will again be on the camera.
—-
Thanks Hexydes
We still have quite a lot that we want to pack in before we release.
http://www.kottke.org/03/10/expose-panther
how about something like this!
🙂
Probably not for 5.0, though Expose is something we have looked at, so who knows for future releases!
does it support arabic in its GUI?
for skyos. the system is looking fine! but what can i do with it with just basic system apps? will there be ports of browsers or office applications?
greetings mue.
I understand why (not saying I agree) some people were accusing you of “borrowing” code. The evolution rate of this project is nothing short of amazing.
Afaik, not much external code is used in SkyOS. But one thought that springs to mind when seeing the rate of development, is that now when open source file systems, kernels, drivers, rendering systems, etc. are getting very mature, will we see an explosion of competing systems built using these components (and thus saving a lot of development time), but with different usability approaches?
Window´s Grouping is certainly usefull, but I hope I can also disable it at all and also “disable” on fly per-app (as in OpenTracker with ´expand-like´ widgets… ala folder navigation in OT…)… If so, amazing, if not… well… another MacOS-like feature that we can´t choose how to use…
I´m looking foward for it… =]