On Thursday 31 January 2013 13:03:39 Marco Martin wrote: > Aaanyways, to expose a bit how i tought things to be (and wrote stuff > accordingly): > * applications may be basically of 3 categories: "browsers", > "viewers/editors of a single thing" and what doesn't really fall in those > categories (that is pretty much 99% of mobile apps, not only games but the > typical half toy half utility of the typical mobile app)
This view is completely application-centric. I've heard repeatedly from members of the Plasma Active team that a bunch of isolated "half toy half utility" apps is precisely what PA is _not_ supposed to be. If users want that, they have a gazillion of existing systems to choose from, each with way more Apps to choose from than we'll ever have. With Plasma Active instead, they get a tightly integrated productivity tool where things work together elegantly and there are no borders between applications anymore. This is a vision most participants of the last IRC meeting agreed upon, and I still firmly believe this is where we can shine. > * in the top menu there would be just links to "browsers", like web, files, > music, books.. and one single "creator" application that would allow to > create files/stuff (or could be confined as a function in the corresponding > browser, note the pim applications pretty much match 1:1 this), and it must > be quite strict for an application to "qualify" for being elected in the > top menu Again: Don't forget communication (see my other mail in this thread). If we treat different means of communication isolatedly (as all app-centric systems to), we're missing out on a _huge_ opportunity to be a whole lot better than existing platforms. > * simple applications to view just one kind of thing wouldn't be in the > menu, but only invoked by opening the proper type of thing (like okular > active, calligra stuff, the image viewer, probably videos needs one as > well) Agreed. > * the "rest" would have a browser of its own, an application browser that > has categories, tags, search and all that, that makes finding an > application easy no matter how many are installed... probably not super > fast to start when you already know what to start, but that's what linking > it to an activity is for. That would leave out most of the ideas for task-centric design we came up with during the last two IRC meetings. We need a way for users to start all kinds of tasks, not just file creation tasks. > in general, applications to fit in the workflow would be "recommended" to be > as small tools as possible to make one and only one thing, otherwise they > go in the big catalog, the top area stays an icon grid, nice, simple and > symmetric but with even less icons than now. I agree there will inevitably be a "rest" of applications that were created from an app-centric perspective. We don't want to lock them out, but we don't want to be "just another shell to start Apps from". _______________________________________________ Active mailing list Active@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/active