On Monday 09 November 2009 18:55:47 Cl?ment wrote: > Hello, > > Since my last attempt to change (or at least to talk about changing) the > freenet UI didn't really succeed, maybe it's better to focus on some points. > > *The default CSS theme: > I think that the clean-dropdown theme is good, but there is one big problem > imho: the status bar looks like the menu bar. I find that very confusing. > > *The global feeling: > I never thought of that before, but the interface looks like an > administration > console. Not really like a software user-oriented interface. I think that the > minimalist theme remove that feeling a bit, so maybe it should be the default > theme, as a first step.
It's a good theme yes. However, it has activelinks, meaning that users will feel they have to wait for it to load and/or will sulk. IMHO activelinks work well with it - they provide an interesting alternative to the search box. But I am not sure we can deploy a theme that requires activelinks before we have the web-pushing branch merged. The web-pushing branch shows progress on the individual images, and prevents their loading from slowing down everything else the browser is doing by hogging connections. It also dynamically updates just about everything. It will require further work to get it merged, because it currently has some stalling issues with slow browsers. Maybe it should be a priority for 0.8? > > *Plugins: > For now, we have a limited amount of plugins. What if we have 10 plugins that > people would use everyday (mail, forum, filesharing, chat, search, upnp, > ...). > I think we should really make plugins a part of freenet, and not just have a > single page for them. Yes. > For instance, the UPnP plugin: why does it appears on the plugin page? I > mean, > it should be part of the configuration : do you want to enable UPnP : [Y/N] > And an other plugin like library: why does it appears on the plugin page? If > it's not loaded, just don't display the search box, and explain why (as we do > now). And don't make people search for it in the plugin page: it should also > be part of the configuration: enable search over freenet? [Y/N] Well the plugin page is where you say Y/N. However, it is a very poor interface. I had planned to rewrite it so that the official plugins have a brief description of what they do, whether or not they are loaded, and to get rid of the internal ID and started time and possibly Visit in simple mode, and probably change the formatting completely. E.g. ============================================ Plugins are extensions to Freenet that provide extra functions. There are official plugins and unofficial plugins. Loaded plugins: <b>UPnP</b> [ Unload ] [ Reload ] This helps your node to find out what your node's IP address is, and automatically forwards your ports by talking to your router. This makes it possible for Freenet to talk to other Freenet nodes more easily. ... <b>MyPlugin</b> [ Unload ] [ Reload ] Unofficial plugin: We do not know what this does. ... Official plugins you could load: <b>Freetalk</b> [ Load ] Freetalk is a message forums system over Freenet. This lets you anonymously talk to other Freenet users, in much the same way as a web forum or news group. ... Load an unofficial plugin Unofficial plugins are not supported and may violate your privacy, eat your cat, etc. Load plugin from: [ box ] [ ] Load from local file [ ] Load from Freenet [ ] Load from the web ============================================ We would probably have an interface for plugins to describe themselves instead of "We do not know what this does.". Most plugins that end-users will actually use are now integrated into the UI. Library is available both from the home page search box and from the Browsing drop-down, for example. Freemail isn't, but it has never worked well for me, and it doesn't currently have a web frontend, only a tool for making identities. > > So, I think that for misc plugins, we should integrate them directly into > freenet, and make them an option. Well, of course, I may have miss something, > and they have to be plugins. Fine, but we don't have to say that to the user. > Or we just warn him that by enabling one of the option, it will load a plugin. One or two are plugins because they require Java 1.6. Several include big third party libraries. Some don't really meet our security standards e.g. JSTUN contacts central servers. IMHO something like Freetalk really should be a separate project at least in the code modularity sense. Some of them offer functionality that most users don't need, e.g. XMLSpider. And we clearly do need to support third party plugins. > > BTW, I don't understand why the heck there is a search freenet page, when > there is a search box on the browse page. The only purpose I can see is to > configure the search. Well, it should be in configuration then. I disagree, you may want to configure *an individual search*, e.g. if you have several search indexes. And we need a page for it anyway to show when doing a search, so what's the harm in having Search Freenet on the drop-down? Admittedly the search page is heavier (more complex) than it needs to be right now, especially with a search running. On the other hand, eventually third party searches will be run directly inline on the freesite of the index inserter, with his style etc. Which reduces the need for configurability - either you use the global search box to search all indexes, or you use the search on the specific site for just that index? > And we can add > the selection of index on the browse page too. I thought we were trying to eliminate visual clutter?! Isn't that the whole point of the minimalist theme? > Or we can use the default > index, and when the search is done, asking if the user want to use an other > index if he didn't find what he searched. Well, we do show which indexes we are searching in on the progress page, even if we don't on the homepage. Are you arguing we should get rid of the progress page somehow? > > For other plugins who really need UI, we should have something looking like > that : > http://www.google.fr/intl/fr/options/ Putting all the plugins in one place and indicating visually whether they are already loaded is a good idea. Icons and categories in the official plugin list is a good idea. Of course it means somebody has to make the icons! So something like this: ============================================ Freenet plugins Chat [ icon ] Freetalk [ Load ] Freetalk lets you talk to other Freenet users anonymously ... [ icon ] Freemail [ Load ] Freemail lets you email other Freenet users anonymously ... Search [ icon ] Library [ Unload ] [ Reload ] Essential tool for searching Freenet. [ icon ] XMLLibrarian [ Load ] Older search tool, you should use Library. [ icon ] XMLSpider [ Load ] Generates indexes of Freenet sites. These indexes are published anonymously and used by Library to search. Can be very heavy on your system. Only run this if you want to publish an index. Connectivity [ icon ] UPnP [ Unload ] [ Reload ] [ Status ] Talks to your router to find out what your IP address is and forward your ports. In other words it makes it a lot easier for Freenet to talk to the rest of the network. Most people should have this. Don't load this if you don't control the router or trust the person who does, if you don't have a router, or if your Internet connection comes in over Ethernet and is shared by lots of people. ... Geeky Stuff [ icon ] KeyExplorer [ Load ] Lets you see low-level details of Freenet keys. ... ============================================ > A sort of application "store", when user can choose which app he wants to > use. > We can add a little '+' on the icon when the application is not yet loaded, > and a '-' when it is. To choose whether we want to load over freenet or over > the web, we have two solution : either we make a global option displayed in > configuration (default freenet), and we always load the plugin accordingly, > except if it fails to load and then we ask if we want to retry or try another > solution, or we display the two options each time we click on the '+' button. The worry with always loading over Freenet first is that if we are not connected, on opennet, the request won't start until either we are or some timeout passes. If we are connected but have poor connectivity, it could take some time to load. But maybe you are right. We could show a dropdown at the bottom only in advanced mode, perhaps. > > *Interaction: > It would be great if we have a home page, with news from the project (what > changed, what is about to, ...), updated bookmarks, friends messages, rss, > etc... This is an interesting argument. We used to have a *lot* more information on the homepage. We got rid of it because it got in the way! Bookmark updates, for example, are minor messages, and thus only show up on the messages page. It had been proposed to highlight bookmarks somehow if they have been updated - how to implement this in the minimalist theme?? On the messages page you will see updated bookmarks, messages from peers, completed inserts and requests, and node status messages and warnings (most of which are dismissable). We used to show the top line summary of each message on the homepage, but it was regarded as a nuisance, so we moved them so only the most important messages are shown - and those are shown in full. Was this the wrong call? What is the alternative? > As I picture it, it would be modular, like google iirc, and a lot of other > site (but google is the only one i can remember right now). You can add a > module, remove it, move it, etc... So perhaps divide messages into categories, and show summaries of each category on the homepage, with links to not show, show more (via CSS or Javascript), or never show? + - X 5 new messages, 12 old messages from friends + - X 12 completed downloads + - X 5 warning messages One problem with this is that the node already shows a summary in the status bar. RSS, or system tray popup notifications a la Skype, may be the best solution? The web-pushing branch allows for live popups within a browsed page, this may be useful for urgent warnings, incoming messages, and of course, "this page has a newer version". With regards to updates from the project, what did you have in mind? New builds should automatically deploy themselves for most people, for the rest they should be a high priority message and therefore displayed. We could maybe display the changelog as a dismissable alert - if we have somewhere to put alerts which isn't getting in the way, messy, and annoying. Appeals for funding are probably not something users want to see ;) > Of course, that would be in a perfect world. If we can have something static, > it would be great too. And I think it would allow the user to view freenet as > something more close to them. > > That's all for now, > Remember that all of that are just remarks, I'm not saying freenet sucks, or > this or that sucks. Just pointing out some things, and asking for comments ;) > > Regards, > > Dieppe > > PS : I didn't know how to structure that, so I just put everything in one > message, but maybe it's best if we focus on one point per answer? As I see it there are three points here: - What to do with the default theme, whether to prioritise web-pushing. - What to do with the plugins page. - What to do with the home page and useralerts. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 835 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/devl/attachments/20091110/7236262d/attachment.pgp>
