[IDEA] Offer a dialog/gui to choose from different GNOME "styles"!

[amano]

Summary:
Currently, when you install Ubuntu you are offered one Ubuntu look which you might like or not. This specification would show up a GUI dialog which lets you choose very different "styles" (which are more than just gtk themes, rather basic different layout decisions) by clicking on a descriptive preview picture.

Rationale:
New GNOME based distributions like openSUSE and Linux Mint offer a new fresh look by including some new technologies (just one panel bar, Gnome-main-menu2, Gnome Control Center). But most of these things strongly depend on the individual taste more than on the usual weighing of pros and cons. The Rationale would be to offer to a new user some very distinctive looks (eg classic brown Ubuntu look vs. a one panel bar bluish look with the Control Center used instead of the prefernces lists, plus maybe a look rather in the middle as a compromise - you get what I want to say) with the ability to choose from. This dialog should be shown automatically the first time after the install (but maybe should be accessible from the menu as well to change it afterwards).

[The existance of these basic styles doesn't prevent anyone though from creating its own personal look. It should be considered just as a suggestions and a showcase of the customization capabilities of the Gnome desktop. Basically we offer 3 very different default and polished looks.]

Scope and Use Cases:
Haris is a long time GNOME veteran and just dislikes the new trends that some "modern" distros (SUSE, Mint) offer. He finds it annoying to have to add his beloved second panel bar manually.

Damir has seen the new SUSE Gnome-main-menu2 on his friend's computer. He tries the new Ubuntu and is disappointed that offers still the warty warthog design without the fancy new stuff.

Dominic recently switched from windows and really hates the GNOME top panel bar but has no clue how to remove it because he is a Linux newbie.

By being offered a descriptive "style choser" on first start any of them can choose the look that they expect/like.

Duro fiddled around with gtk themes, colors, panels and wallpapers but didn't like outcome. He would need an easy way to get back to the default look from where he startet (because after failing on improving it, he notced that it hadn't been so bad)

Implementation Plan:
Isn't there some usable code from the last Google Summer of Code that could be used? I cannot tell where I got this information from, it is rather a vague memory

:popcorn:

EDIT: Added some clarifications.

[23meg]

I wouldn't support showing a dialog upon first install, and gnome-theme-manager seems quite fit for this; I don't think a separate GUI is very much needed. It lets you select whole themes including icons, window borders and controls in the main screen, where you have thumbnails of them too.

Isn't there some usable code from the last Google Summer of Code that could be used?

Is there any that you know of, or maybe vaguely remember?

[chakkaradeep]

Summary:
Currently, when you install Ubuntu you are offered one Ubuntu look which you might like or not. This specification would show up a GUI dialog which lets you choose very different "styles" by clicking on a descriptive preview picture.


Its already there with Theme Preferences dialog box and you could very well change it once you install Ubuntu. How far is this different from your idea?


Rationale:
New GNOME based distributions like openSUSE and Linux Mint offer a new fresh look by including some new technologies (just one bar, SLAB start menu, Gnome Control Center).


I wouldn't impose any thing new :D , rather make them available in the repos and using some program like Automatix , i can install them. Right now automatix does allow me to install Novell slab menu.

[Turgon]

I think this isn't such a bad idea, but perhaps not with so many aspects as you describe. I think that you shoud get up a dialog-box on first start up after the install (highly skippable!) that introduses ubuntu to new users and helps them setting up things as they would like. Choosing what style you want to use (colors and such) could be a part of that "wizard", but I think that an inclution of options for SLAB/not SLAB, two bars vs one bar, control center/menu based control-center could easily make it cluttered and dissorient the user. Many users won't even know the difference between the different options, and that can actualy lead them to belive that they did something wrong. Yes, a lot of instructions could be included, but that would make such a wizard slow to walk through and really kill the whole point of a quick setup manager.

[amano]

No. I want that users have the possibility to choose between more radically distinctive "layouts" than just having to choose from some similiar skins.

To have a preview picture of the resulting desktop:

1 panel (bottom) vs. 1 panel (top) vs. 2 panels (bottom and top)
Classic Gnome Menu vs. Gnome-main-menu2 vs. USP
Classic System Lists (Administration and Preferences) vs. Control Center
Use a pattern background vs. a photo (picture) background
Desktop effects enabled vs. disabled



Rather 2 or 3 very different and finetuned default looks to choose from and not just the dialog to choose your GTK theme. Rather similar to the windows XP classic look vs. the XP Luna look vs. vista aero look. Or just Vista basic vs. vista aero look.

I hope that you get what I mean. Completely different layouts than just different themes (with possibly different packages used/installed)

[chakkaradeep]

1 panel (bottom) vs. 1 panel (top) vs. 2 panels (bottom and top)
Classic Gnome Menu vs. SLAB vs. USP
Classic System Lists (Administration and Preferences) vs. Control Center
a pattern background vs. photo background picture
Desktop effects enabled vs. disabled


If you ask a naive user, he would just ask what are all these :o

The more options we give to user, the more we make them confused :(

[amano]

Yes. But just THAT IS my point. Just offer 3 preview pictures of very differently styled desktops and let the user choose (= click) one of those. The one which he likes most. Simple and basic, without ANY knowledge necessary (But he shoulld be able to just click this dialog away easily as well).

Thus he doesn't have to know, how to add bars and panels and packages and themes. he can simply choose from few different but polished proposals and pick the one that fits his taste. :guitar:

Just a very simple dialog is needed with few meaningful pictures which give a good impression of the resulting desktop. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Basic conceptrs are best most of the time.

[Turgon]

No. I want that users have the possibility to choose between more radically distinctive "layouts" than just having to choose from some similiar skins.

To have a preview picture of the resulting desktop:

1 panel (bottom) vs. 1 panel (top) vs. 2 panels (bottom and top)
Classic Gnome Menu vs. SLAB vs. USP
Classic System Lists (Administration and Preferences) vs. Control Center
a pattern background vs. photo background picture
Desktop effects enabled vs. disabled



Rather 2 or 3 very different and finetuned default looks to choose from and not just the dialog to choose your GTK theme. Rather similar to the windows XP classic look vs. the XP Luna look vs. vista aero look. Or just Vista basic vs. vista aero look.

I hope that you get what I mean. Completely different layouts than just different themes (with possibly different packages used/installed)

I get what you mean, and it would be nice, but I think it would be hard to implement in a way thats user friendly for new users, beacause they won't really have a clue what the diffrence is in real life without going through several pictures of each option and it should therefor not be in the install prosess.

I also think its much more importiant to make one very good user interface (do user-case studies, ect) that covers most users needs, rather than having three thats not that good. On the other hand a choise is always nice to have, so if the devs have the ressorses to make more than one polished look, its very welcome.

Maby your idea could do great as an extention of the existing theme-manager, which sadly doesn't cover all the essential thngs for the desktop look and feel?

[chakkaradeep]

Yes. But just THAT IS my point. Just offer 3 preview pictures of very differently styled desktops and let the user choose (= click) one of those. The one which he likes most. Simple and basic, without ANY knowledge necessary (But he shoulld be able to just click this dialog away easily as well).

Thus he doesn't have to know, how to add bars and panels and packages and themes. he can simply choose from few different but polished proposals and pick the one that fits his taste. :guitar:



Now its clear and showing previews is really good :D

[amano]

I get what you mean, and it would be nice, but I think it would be hard to implement in a way thats user friendly for new users, beacause they won't really have a clue what the diffrence is in real life without going through several pictures of each option and it should therefor not be in the install prosess.


Probably most users do not want to finetune their system. They just want to choose some basic things (created by artists) and are happy then.

As a newbie I would have loved it ;)

And if the dialog was accessible form the preferences, a new user could try out the other proposals at a later time as well.

But I would vote for not more than 3 proposals. That should be sufficient. Otherwise it might get confusing again.

[bns]

I'm with you on this one. I don't think a simple choice like, "Which picture do you like?" is going to confuse the average user. At any rate I think it more likely that someone who is "on the fence" about linux will get annoyed with little cosmetic things (icons, top menu bar, etc.) that he/she doesn't like. I think the concept is great and I hope someone comes up with a good way to implement it.

[23meg]

I don't support your idea, but be aware that it requires:

- A way to reconfigure panels on the fly. The only implementation of this that I know of is Peter Moberg's Panel Switcher (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PanelSwitcher) from last year's Google SoC, and it doesn't work very consistently.

- gnome-main-menu / USP installed by default. I don't know the likelihood of this happening since I'm not familiar with the projects.

Please investigate these and refine your proposal.

[amano]

gnome-main-menu2 might be included in the next gnome version. If it was featured there no additional packages would be needed.

The panel switcher might be the program that I was referring to. I will google to find out its current state. Thanks for the link.

[brentcore]

I think a better implementation would be to have the option to switch to the slab menu and control center straight from the themes menu rather than the user having to know the name of the packages. Right alongside the choice of icons, windows decorations, etc. should be a radio button that says "Menu bar navigation" and then another that says "Pop up menu navigation".

[sharperguy]

I really like this idea, and as long as it can be implemented I think it should be.

However it should affect other users who do not want it, in other words, it shouldn't come up during the install process or first boot.

A good place to put it, apart from in the preferences menu, would be the right click desktop menu if possible (to go along with desktop background)

[macogw]

What about the program Sabayon? It saves Gconf "profiles" and then you can pick from them and it changes your panels' colors and contents and styles, and I'm sure it changes a lot of other stuff, I just stay far enough away from Gconf to not know what else it does (did we really need to port the Windows Registry?)

[amano]

There is another interesting user case:

Duro fiddled around with gtk themes, colors, panels and wallpapers but didn't like outcome. He would need an easy way to get back to the default look from where he startet (because after failing on improving it, he notced that it hadn't been so bad)

[23meg]

He could just select the default theme (Human) in gnome-theme-manager, delete his applets or whole panel, and select a new wallpaper.

[Lucifiel]

How about simply, providing an option that allows the user to revert to the default theme, then? You're offering various choices for people, you might as well offer the default choice as well. The choice could be listed as : Ubuntu Default Theme.

[23meg]

How about simply, providing an option that allows the user to revert to the default theme, then? You're offering various choices for people, you might as well offer the default choice as well. The choice could be listed as : Ubuntu Default Theme.

It already exists in the theme manager.

[amano]

He could just select the default theme (Human) in gnome-theme-manager, delete his applets or whole panel, and select a new wallpaper.

Yes. He could log every step when finetuning the system and revert all his changes step by step. That's technically doable at least.

I think that you stated already sufficiently that you don't like the whole idea. This part of the idea is a proposal to simplify things for new users. That things can be done in other ways should be clear, isn't it?

[23meg]

Yes. He could log every step when finetuning the system and revert all his changes step by step. That's technically doable as well.

I think that you stated already sufficiently that you don't like the whole idea.

This isn't about me not liking the idea; I gave you suggestions before despite the fact that I don't like the idea. I'm telling you what's already doable for the use case you suggested. He doesn't have to log every step he took; he can simply

1) Select the default theme in the main window in the theme manager

2) Delete his panel, or remove the items he added (they're visible in the panel; he doesn't have to go digging or look up a log of what he did, and since he customized the panel in the first place, he must know how to remove items)

3) Choose a different wallpaper. He knows how to change wallpapers, because he changed them before.