On 20 Jun 2008, at 16:56, Stuart {Balckberry handheld} wrote:
>> I miss the JDS look and feel, which is the user presentation
>> experience. For users to migrate away from Windows, it is very
>> helpful to have a close look-alike for the transition.
To be fair, I don't think OpenSolaris has (so far) been intentionally
targeting 'migrating Windows users' nearly as much as JDS originally
did. That may change over subsequent releases, of course.
FWIW, it's only a two-minute job to rearrange your OpenSolaris panels
to look like JDS. Just delete the top panel, and re-add the necessary
bits to the bottom panel. This is a one-time deal; your customised
layout will be preserved through all but the most major of OpenSolaris
upgrades.
Enterprises can roll out such customisations globally using APOC, of
course, if they feel that would suit their users better than the
default. (Or they should be able to, anyway-- I don't know if APOC
supports OpenSolaris yet.)
The one thing you can't recreate manually right now is the Quick
Launch area from the top of the JDS Launch menu. That's a patch that
hasn't been ported to OpenSolaris as yet; if you think it should be,
it might be worth opening an enhancement request at
defect.opensolaris.org. This and the other points your raise will
likely be discussed again when we finalise the desktop UI spec[1] for
the 2008.11 release.
>> The 01/08 release is what I was using in the bank on my laptop
>> because it was a very good release for laptops, being Solaris it is
>> 'allowed technology' in the bank and it had a similar desktop with
>> a comercially supported office package from Sun - that is key. Now
>> it has lost this.
I don't know if there are any plans to make StarOffice available for
OpenSolaris, but it sounds like, for now, you'd be better off using
SXCE if possible. It still has the old JDS panel layout, even the old
Blueprint theme if you still want to use that, and AFAIK it still
includes StarOffice.
Cheeri,
Calum.
[1] http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/desktop/uispecs/indiana-uispec/
--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum.benson at sun.com GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771
Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems
