Some points/issues to discuss about the desktop

[John]

Jeff Waugh wrote:

><quote who="John">
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>>I think these should be on the desktop:
>>Home
>>Documents
>>Network (if/when a network is detected)
>>Photos (if/when the user uses a camera or a photo application)
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>The upstream take on this is that the desktop is what users have to look at
>all the time, so we should leave as much up to them as possible, and not
>fill it with stuff (glance at the average Windows desktop to see the logical
>conclusion of that). Each icon on the desktop is an in-memory special icon,
>not a real file (that's why ~/Desktop is empty), so we have to take into
>account that all of these are links, not real.
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>Home -> should be on the desktop, as that gives the user access to all their
>files, which they couldn't get to otherwise.
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Home on _my_  system is useless. Takes too long to open. atm it's got 
about 440 files & directories that are not hidden, 600 total.

>Documents -> debatable because it's already accessible from the home
>directory, where all the users files live, so it doesn't need a special
>place on the desktop. by putting it on the desktop at the same time as Home,
>we end up with another strange recursion.
>
>Network -> upstream has chosen not to put this on the desktop, instead you
>can browse network storage through the Computer icon (where storage stuff
>lives). i'm ambivalent about this one.
>
>Photos -> this is not special/important enough to be on the desktop, and it
>would be well-represented by a real folder in the home directory, along with
>Desktop, Documents, Music, Templates, etc. OS X primes the home directory
>with a set of useful default folders, which is pretty much what upstream
>would like to see happen in distros.
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A while ago, Mum was thinking of getting a computer, and to her the big 
apps were
WWW
Email
Photos.

I think photos will become increasingly important: you can take pretty 
good happsnaps with cheap digital cameras, and a 128 Mb or larger memory 
card lets you take a lot between recharges, and you only pay for those 
you print. I think for home users Photos will become more important than 
Documents (I suspect most won't consider a photo a kind of document).

It's some time since I used Gnome, so here I speak in some ignorance. I 
will rectify it soon, but I need to add RAM to one of my PIIIs first.

Finder on the Mac has high-level entries for Desktop, Home (called 
"summer" as that's my account alias), Documents, Movies, Pictures, 
WhiteAlbum (disk name), mUdlark (computer's name) and Network.

And Applications which is the menu I dislike.

No "Music" though.


Root's desktop should include "System settings."

>>My parents (in their eighties) will have problems with menus. Folders,
>>probably with single-click activation - I remember having problems with
>>double-click in OS/2, are far easier to use.
>>    
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>Unfortunately, single-click activation has a lot of side-effects with other
>operations, such as selecting files and so on. It's enough of an established
>convention that changing it ends up being a loss rather than a gain. There
>are a lot of 'interesting' decisions we just end up having to live with in
>HCI/GUI design. :-)
>
>- Jeff
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I didn't expect to win this one, but I was really annoyed when RH 
barstardised KDE with its new theme and making double-click the default.