ubiquity-slideshow team mailing list archive

[H S <perhapspink@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dylan

I would like to respond to your concerns, point for point, but I had some
trouble understanding what you were trying to say in your last message.


> I'm using Webkit entirely because it will probably be on the live cd by
default ... If this turns out not to be the case, it'll be Firefox's
xulrunner or a hand-made XML parser.

I understand this part.  You are confident that using WebKit (or some other
web markup engine) is the right way to go because it will *probably* already
be included on the LiveCD.


> I love the way you have the bubbles here. Very tidy. Light on text, heavy
on image is a decent idea to pursue so long as the image conveys the right
information to replace the text. In your example I don't think that is so
much the case;

I think you are saying that it would have been better if I had chosen
differently for the images on my slides.  Is that what you meant, and if so,
what would you suggest instead?


> ... for information about support resources, it sure does a lot of
promoting GNOME Do. (I guess we could call that a dual purpose, but then the
reader forgets support having been blinded by GNOME Do's brilliance). Of
course, that's an example. I can certainly imagine where that would work
really well.

I'm sorry, but this just leaves me confused.  You seem to be saying
something about GNOME Do, but I don't see how that is relevant.  Are you
saying my text bubbles remind you of the GNOME Do interface, and if so, what
does that mean in terms of the suitability of my proposed design?


> One issue with using big images alone is localization ... Stripping text /
localization details from screenshots and handling the captions with
text could be one way about that ...


I think you are touching upon the issue of,

"How do we produce slides that are in each user's preferred language?"

As well, "How do we do this without taking up a huge chunk of memory on the
LiveCD?"

Is that what you are saying?  If so, this is something I was thinking about
when I was making these latest mockups, as a matter of fact.  I feel it's an
important issue.  I also believe there is an elegant solution to this -
layers.  Considering your aforementioned preference of implementing the
slideshow with a web markup engine, I have an idea how we can address this
issue by using CSS Layers with Absolute Positioning.  I would be happy to
share the details of this solution with you, but for now, I just want to be
sure I am properly understanding what you are trying to say.


Well, that's about it.  I look forward to your reply, and I thank you in
advance, for taking the time and effort to clarify what you were trying to
say in your previous message.


Thanks,

Howard "Freeman" Stellar.



On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 2:04 AM, Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Fri, 2009-07-03 at 23:15 -0400, H S wrote:
> > I kept tinkering around, and have a couple of new slideshow mockups
> > and a grand idea.
> >
> > Instead of using all that space on the Ubuntu LiveCD to build WebKit
> > into the Ubiquity installer, just to have a slideshow, why not just
> > build an old-fashioned image slideshow, using .jpeg slides?  That way,
> > even if the slides themselves take up more memory, the whole slideshow
> > would certainly take up much less memory just by ditching WebKit.
> > Going this route, would also mean we could design really nice looking
> > slides, and focus on visual appeal, and conveying simple, easy to
> > understand messages.  Just a thought.  Anyhow, please take a look at
> > my latest slide mockups, and let me know what you think:
> > http://ubuntuwtf.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/some-more-slideshow-mockups/
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Howard "Freeman" Stellar.
>
> That looks cool.
> I should point out that I'm using Webkit entirely because it will
> probably be on the live cd by default; GNOME is bringing it in pretty
> strongly as an external dependency. If this turns out not to be the
> case, it'll be Firefox's xulrunner or a hand-made XML parser.
>
> I love the way you have the bubbles here. Very tidy. Light on text,
> heavy on image is a decent idea to pursue so long as the image conveys
> the right information to replace the text. In your example I don't think
> that is so much the case; for information about support resources, it
> sure does a lot of promoting GNOME Do. (I guess we could call that a
> dual purpose, but then the reader forgets support having been blinded by
> GNOME Do's brilliance).
> Of course, that's an example. I can certainly imagine where that would
> work really well.
>
> One issue with using big images alone is localization. Text gets lost in
> there, so either we abandon translations or use boatloads of space to
> support them. I just got the first nail into the translation (and build:
> <https://launchpad.net/~ubiquity-slideshow/+archive/ppa<https://launchpad.net/%7Eubiquity-slideshow/+archive/ppa>>)
> infrastructure
> for the HTML  version, meanwhile, to sort of get that moving. Nice thing
> with it is people just work through Launchpad's Rosetta (the
> Translations section), submit new strings and are done. (Err, don't all
> jump on it at once, though; strings are certainly not frozen and .pot
> files are not right).
>
> If you have some ideas to that end it would be swell. Stripping text /
> localization details from screenshots and handling the captions with
> text could be one way about that, but I can't really picture how it
> would look...
>
>
> This particular idea may be well suited to a kind of promotional web
> site, too, where localization isn't so much of an expectation and where
> disk space doesn't impact the end user.
>
>
>
> Take care,
>
> Dylan
>