A joint effort of #tango. Many hands make light work.

…introducing Tango Blush.

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(Icons are under CC-BY-SA.)

Mocked up some idea’s about GNOME 3. Got inspired by Bumptop and Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen.

This is the default workspace. It show’s an actual “desk”. Applets are integrated into the desk. The name of the workspace is shown in the bottom left corner. The orange arrows at the top Let’s you switch to an other workspace. Hovering on these arrows will show the name of the workspace that you will reach when you click it. The desk is partially transparent and the user’s wallpaper is shown behind it. Files and folders on the desk are shown in perspective and can be moved around freely, like you would on a real desk.

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Clicking a random place on the desk pops up the cicular main application menu. This way you can launch applications fast wherever your mouse pointer is. The menu is ciccular so the distance from the mouse pointer to each category is always equal.

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Hovering over a category shows the applications inside that category, also in a circular menu. Applications that are used more often will move to the position closest to the opened category icon.

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Windows that are inactive “lay down” on the desk and are of a different color, they can be moved around like files. The active window is like active windows are now in GNOME 2.x, so it looks like you’re holding the window in front of you.

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Comments and idea’s are welcome.

Altough I’ve been very positive and enthousiastic about gnome-main-menu a while ago, it’s now my main point of annoyance on my desktop. There are of course a few new features that are quite usable and I didn’t want to lose them, so I’ll keep the menu around.

That is, for now. I’ve been working on a new implementation for a GNOME main menu, that takes all advantages of gnome-main-menu and the traditional gnome menu and put’s it in one. I’ll some up some of the most advantages and disadvantages of both:

GNOME Main Menu

Advantages:

- Search bar
- Favorites
- Recently used applications
- Status of network and hard drive (but this is not something you need in a menu)

Disadvantages:

- Slow (and often unstable)
- “More Applications” button
- Opening the Application Browser takes too long.
- Getting lost in the Application Browser
- No category icons
- Remove/update/install software actions are too distro specific
- How do I shutdown the machine? I only see” Log Out”

Traditional Main Menu

Advantages:

- Places
- Fast
- Category icons

Disadvantages:

- Too much clutter and submenu’s

As you can see there is a long list under disadvantages GNOME Main Menu, don’t get me wrong, I like how the menu looks and the idea behind it, but it just doesn’t work.

Here are some screenshots of actual working code. The new menu shows you GDM face, browses application categories, shows your favorites and has your places at hand. It also shows the user’s name, so you know as who you’re logged in. The menu is written in pyGTK.

There is still a lot to be done:

Hello!

My name is Hylke Bons,
22 years old, born in the city of Groningen, The Netherlands. Currently living in London working for Intel on exciting Open Source stuff like Moblin.

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