unity-design team mailing list archive

[Andrew SB <a.starr.b@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 8:29 PM, Joern Konopka <cldx3000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 1:27 AM, Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>  On 08/08/10 20:49, Apoorva Sharma wrote:
>> > I like all these ideas, but why not do what KDE4 did, and present a
>> > desktop of files, a zeitgeist timeline, etc. as widgets, so you could
>> > have access to files and useful information?
>>
>> I do think a gadget story is interesting. There's no really compelling
>> framework out there today, though. Google's implementations have a lot
>> of rendering and usability problems, and the gadgets are not attractive.
>> Yahoo's is closed source. The others are marginal.
>
> I was thinking more on the lines of desktop implementations, not web
> implemtation, like KDE4's Plasma.
>
>> Am I missing a good candidate?


> If I may lead attention to SeedKit for a second:
> http://live.gnome.org/SeedKit
> In a nutshell it's a gtkWidget holding a (optionally) transparent webkit
> container, it ties strongly with the Seed JavaScript Implementation, GObject
> Introspection and DBUS (all the sweet stuff everyones looking at right now).
> I think by putting WebTechnology in the front row we'll have the highest
> possible developer base. Just imagine something like A Ubuntu Widget Website
> not unlike Android Market or the App Store ( or a tie in with the USC )
> where people can upload new Widgets which provide them with capabilities
> like :
> 1. Easy to learn and get into ( any other guy could write a basic Widget
> within under a Day)
> 2. Are easily portable to other Mobile Devices, Websites and Distributions
> 3. Offers Devs of f.e. iPhone HTML5 Apps a very convenient way to bring
> their Apps to a new Audience in form of a Widget.
> The sweet thing about it, it's already working and would only need the
> WM_CLASS treatment (meaning a window class for widgets of course).
> One could even go as far as supplying the Widget with a pull and push
> function (Pull= a "real" GTKWindow, push=move back to widget space) and you
> could even "listen" to the window state via CSS Media Queries.
> Proof of concept:
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1890515/MiniPlayerPreview.ogv
> I pulled this off in just a couple hours even though I never used Seedkit
> before.


Thanks for point that out! I hadn't come across that yet. It looks
very promising, and I can't wait to dig into it more.

What I'd really like to see is something like this in a sandboxed
environment. There's been a lot of talk about making it easier for
"opportunistic" developers to get apps out to Ubuntu users, and the
comparison is always iPhone|Android. In some ways the discussion of
the new "Post Release App" process is putting the cart before the
horse. Developing a framework like this paired with something like the
"Post Release App" process could be very interesting...

- Andrew SB