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.
Looks sweet! One thing im worried about though is the second layer menu. With four items it looks good, but will it scale well to, lets say 20 items?
I don’t like the idea that much. I think that panels are more customizable, and real world metaphors often don’t map too well to a computer screen.
But the circular-menu on the desktop is a good idea.
Interesting. Kind of reminds me of the Quicksilver radial interface as seen here
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/205-screens-around-town-the-quicksilver-radial-menu
wow!!! i really like the circle menus and the 3d effekt for inactive windows, i would really like such a desktop! simple, cairo all the way and fast, at least it seems so. damn great work, hbons.
The Circular Menu idea is great! Great ideas there!
So what happens when you have more than a few menu items in a category? Like what if I have 10 or so media applications? That doesn’t look so good in a radial menu. In that sense, it just doesn’t scale well. I find radial menus disorienting as well. But I DO like the idea of getting rid of the panels! And the idea of windows “laying down”. Fantastic way to show focus. I can only imagine how cool alt-tab switching would be :). More mockups/ideas please!
Ulgy. Lots of space unused. And circular menus take too mane space, they could be faster, than traditional, but it is too hard and too long to get used to them. Remember such menu in Genius NetScroll driver for Windows? Cool, but useless.
Most of us already have our computer sitting on a desk and have paper on it. We don’t need another desk INSIDE the computer, and having inactive windows morphed onto it makes it hard to read/view their contents.
I like the circular menu though, but it would take A LOT of getting used to = time businesses might not want to pay for. It is hard to judge without using it.
Just wondering how it would work for dozens of apps in a category, and its not good to have the apps move around depending on how much you use them, because once you click on it, your brain knows where it is, and then it is moved and you have to find it again. Unintuitive. But we do have a well set list of application categories.
The circular menu reminds me of the “hive” of UDE: http://udeproject.sourceforge.net/
I don’t think that this idea has ever cought on.
I like it very much! It’s pretty much what i have in my mind when i think how desktops should look.
If there is anyway i could get involved in this project with ideas of even beta test, feel free to e-mail me.
Well crafted icons look nice, but there is a limit how well people can recognize them. Of course mouse-over could show the names of apps, but still…
Also I am skeptic about covering the background image permanently with something. The image is there because people want to see it. It’s like a painting on the wall, delighting the environment the user is in.
Xfce has a menu when you right click on the desktop, but it still needs panels for things like quick launchers, taskbar, etc. Having applets on the desktop is good, but half the point is that they’re quickly accessible because they can’t be covered by windows.
I think that the comment about many items cluttering a radial menu is valid, but the idea that the human brain can store around 7 things at once, or focus on 7 things implies that more than 7 things in a menu probably means you should add a sub-menu..
With this in mind I’d be suggesting a menu restructure (deeper categories) to keep the menu items to 7, but then map the positions around the menu to the number pad, so for quick access without a mouse, you could say, hit 3-2-5 to launch internet>browsers>firefox or what have you.
Reminds me of MS-BOB. Awful. Just stick with the regular UI.
beautiful.
Looks good and could be useful, BUT IN GNOME?? I just don’t know, gnome is just supposed to be user-friendly, while kde stands for innovation. I rather see someone work on a new desktop manager to implement this.
And one thing that is good with panels, are that they are always visible. If you have an application in full screen you can’t access your desktop. Therefore panels are needed.
I would like it, if the “minimized” apps would go to the perspective view on that white desktop. And not minimized (unfocused and focused) are showed in rectangular shape in “front” of screen. Maximized apps would take the whole screen, like currently. Neat idea. Instead of searching the icon or app name from the taskbar or dock, one can find the application window itself from that white desktop. But this means the apps must be nice formatted on that white desktop, because getting one behind the other would be incomfortable.
You people are complete and utter morons, a nd shouldnt be allowed to be any where near a computer.
Well I am glad that people are looking for ways to get rid of the traditional Desktop, with its abundance of panels, I think this is too simplistic and besides that you need to address what you are supposed to do when you have an application in full screen? What if you cannot click on the Desk behind the applications?
Besides that what is your method of minimization? That is what if you want to minimize an app? Perhaps if you had clever windows, this could work, because clever windows do not require a taskbar.