UIDesign

Unstructured UI design notes

Right clicking an item brings up (fades in, curtains in) an (almost) fully-fledged window with clicked object positioned in window's top left corner.

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Persistence snapshot indication light in the top right corner:

• when green, system is currently synced to disk and even if you forcedly power off it will recover to current state (persistent)
• when yellow, minor actions unsaved (like newly started application)
• when red, major actions unsaved (like typing in new data).
• when red-yellow stripes flowing, system is syncing to disk.
• turning into yellow-green stripes and then becoming green when snapshot is committed.

Click indicator light to force snapshot.

Snapshot Manager - application to list snapshots, their integrity status (ok, some parts unrecoverable, critical parts unrecoverable - cannot be used for running), freezing and unfreezing snapshots - useful for post-mortem analysis f.ex. Disk usage monitor displays amount of data taken up by snapshots and how much can be freed (all snapshots except two most recent and frozen ones).

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Global shortcut: Open - bring up document search and creation window. Allows to find documents and applications and manipulate them (run, edit etc). Behaves much like a general file manager (Dolphin).

Address book - brings up address book window which serves as a central Contact List for every contacted person. Search/filter navigation, can add new contacts by means of user search or direct entry. User search can be performed by any associated program (mail, skype, icq, any other protocol allowing search). From address book user communication may be initiated - write an email, send a skype IM, make a skype call, invite to netmeeting video conference - spectre of activites depends on installed software. Regular IM programs don't have their CLs - they use different views into Address Book instead. You can have apps mark some contacts as having new incoming communications, make them float on the desktop or pop up notifications about such activities. User communication history is logged and available via Address Book as well - all calls, IMs, emails exchanged are logged and available as timeline view (+search).

Один из простых экранов для начала: Login screen - more or less Vista-like, with finger scanner window in the center, prefilled username above it. Possible changes: better user selection, probably a carousel view activated by Alt-Tabbing (i.e. alt-tab shows a rotating ring of users and activates next one, much like ring application switcher in Compiz). On top, a mac-safari-dialog-like pop-down window with "Restoring snapshot..." and progress bar - when resuming system it will restore running state in the background after getting to the login screen. Poweroff and reboot buttons in bottom left corner.

Desktop/Workspace: challenges - should be possible to launch some central menu quickly - keyboard shortcut + analogue of "start" button - or active screen edge (or corner) for activating the Open dialog (see Global shortcuts above). Variant: turn the desktop surface into a file manager itself. No need to save files "to desktop" if desktop can show any particular selection of files from the whole filesystem.

Pull down menus, especially nested ones are very unhandy and error prone - avoid as much as possible.

Plasma widgets (aka Mac Dashboards) - handy way to organize several utility apps. Challenges - how to indicate important updates to dashboard when it's not visible?

Running applications: probably use Mac-like bar for running apps and shortcuts for quicklaunch.

Systray: some applications might want to display important information, but most of the time it's the waste of screen space. Need place to allocate "always" visible icons. Maybe in the running apps bar itself - just some app icons will fade out and some become smaller when inactive, showing an analogue of system tray. When runbar is active again (mouse hover, key shortcut) - app icons fade in and grow back again.

Applications that might be interesting to be always visible: network signal strength and connection status, network traffic in/out, current keyboard layout, recently plugged in devices, audio or music playback volume. Otoh, while traffic counters and keyboard layout might be required to be visible, network signal and plugged in devices may show briefly (jump up like on mac and then fade out) only when changes occur.

Archie-like command system: press F1 and then type a few letters to enter a command. Commands show expected autocompletion (which can be typed over if you keep typing), press enter whenever you see appropriate command to start it. (Same can be done with voice command).

Applications: Interaction-centric model. Actions with and on documents like "save from", "copy to", "share with" etc are logged with complete timeline. Challenges - get rid of nested pulldown menus as much as possible. Ideally minimum amount of 1-level pull downs. Placing menus on top of the screen is preferred due to usability reasons. "Toolbar" icons can be placed in the same top line to help aiming. Adjust toolbar icon sizes to fit Fitt's automagically (if you click Open 22 times, it will be slightly bigger than the rest of the toolbar).

Window decorations: challenge - find a way to manipulate window without window decorations and extra keys. E.g. window title can briefly fade in when window is activated, so generally no need to display it all the time.

This is in constrast with e.g. Nitpicker where it should be always possible to tell the security realm each app runs in.