unity-design team mailing list archive

[Petko <pditchev@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 05/29/2012 09:55 PM, shane lee wrote:
> Widgets are nothing new.  They have been on the go for many years and
> never really taken off.
> I know quite a few people using KDE, including myself who have never
> bothered with widgets after the first few days of novelty factor.
> Android has a lot of very good ideas but not all are going to
> translate that well to a larger desktop interface.
> The desktop concept is far from dead and will be with us for some time yet.
I'm not at all saying it's dead , and I agree it's possible that some of
the features may not translate good to a PC . It's just that Ubuntu is
becoming launcher/dock-centric , and the Desktop is going to lose (or at
least I think is supposed to lose) its current functions . Some more
support to the idea : Mark Shuttleworth himself said that Unity has the
goal to be tablet/smartphone compatible as much (if not more) as it
should be PC usable (sry for the messed up sentence) . So the desktop
should get some new functionality , and I think that taking a second
look at widgets is a nice start . Yes they've failed on PCs initially ,
but now with the experience on tablets/phones , I think they are
something that can be successfully implemented . What I imagine is a
desktop with a native way to add a widget (right click ->
select/configure widget) , with a list of 4-5 widgets (each with 1-2
sizes/forms) and the option to download more . And a design near that of
a phone/tablet widget (not a tiny box of a widget,like the first ones
that got out ) - nice big weather widget , clock , maybe options for
mail, social networks , or watever someone wants to develop .
 The main idea is to give the desktop some dynamic functionality and
usability , and if it's native and easy to use users will handle it and
be happy with it .

Another thing that I've thought about is making dynamic wallpapers an
option . I'm just throwing that out there , some day I'll start a thread
on it too .

Petko