elementary-dev-community team mailing list archive

["Sergey \"Shnatsel\" Davidoff" <sergey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey guys,

With Chrome OS adopting Slingshot design in the stable channel now (
http://chrome.blogspot.com.br/2012/08/a-new-apps-list-on-chrome-os.html),
Slingshot is definitely going to be considered "Chome OS ripoff!!!11" by
many. I think we should set up a page somewhere in elementaryos.org to
track (some of the) design decisions of controversial origing we use and
show the actual history those design decisions had. That Chrome OS thing
also uses the same idea as my True App Center rant from three months
earlier (http://shnatsel.blogspot.com/2012/03/true-app-center.html) and
GNOME Shell has also picked it up for GNOME 3.6 (
http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2012/08/21/rounding-out-the-3-6-feature-list/
).

Contractor is a good example of predating the competition by a significant
amount of time. GNOME is also steadily picking up our design decisions,
though it's not much of a big deal.

Oh, and we should mention prior art about which we weren't aware... for
example, Maemo has a great AppMenu in GTK that predated our implementation
(by the way, it's designed simply gorgeously; I think we should rip more of
it!). Maemo also has a 3x5 menu grid which we found to be optimal... etc.

And we create a way for readers to submit info on prior art as well as
further evolution of these design decisions. I think this will contribute
greatly to our image of open design as well as code.

-- 
Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
OS architect @ elementary