LinuxWorld’s Expo 2004 started today and we were there for a few hours discussing a few interesting matters with the Linux luminaries and companies. Check in for some info and images from the expo.Trolltech:
Matthias Ettrich talked to us about KDE, freedesktop.org and the need for a unified HIG. He believes that accessibility is one of the most forgotten sides of the Unix desktop and so he mentioned the adoption of Sun’s ATK by KDE, a library which is still not as complete as he would like it to be though. Regarding other freedesktop.org technologies, Matthias can’t wait for KDE to start using D-BUS and this is a technology that he will stretch at aKademy later this month. Mathias also told us that he would like to see a more generalized HIG through freedesktop.org that is not as toolkit-bound as Gnome’s HIG is. “Button order and pixel spacing are details of an implementation, they are styling issues and adhere to personal usage patterns based on ones’ experience. I am looking more for a HIG that really guides you on how to create usable applications“, he said.
Trolltech’s CEO Haavard Nord showed us Qtopia, which is expected to be shipped later this year in China. Other manufacturers have also licensed Qtopia for phone distribution in Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Italy. Qtopia runs on 176×208 (minimum res) smartphones and it is expected to be coupled with Opera as the browser of choice. Motorola has a continued keen interest on Qtopia.
Xandros:
The Xandros guys are seriously going into the server space, starting with their deployment tool, xDMS. They had live demonstrations of the tool and they all looked very proud of this solution.
Lycoris:
We also met with Joseph Cheek, the Lycoris founder, who showed us the upcoming version of Lycoris (to be released in 2 weeks). It’s got a transparent Kicker and it looks pretty slick. Joseph showed us the A2 integration work he’s done, which basically brings Win4Lin and Win9x/ME closer to the Lycoris desktop. For example, the virtual C: folder of Windows is showing on Konqueror’s root window along with the other “real” partitions. This makes it easy to figure out where your Windows is installed on your Linux partition. Also, when you insert a Windows CD on the drive, Win4Lin will automatically start and will try to load it inside Windows. Additionally, the “Programs” Windows menu is now a sub-menu on KDE’s menu. The Win4Lin package will retail on a separated bundle.
Novell:
The Novell, Ximian and SuSE booths were under the same roof at LinuxWorld. We talked with two Mono guys who showed us MonoDevelop running, and a program which is able to load the Gecko module and create a functional browser in under 35-40 lines of code.
Red Hat:
Apparently Red Hat Enterprise 4 is coming out in February and it will sport the 2.6.x kernel. A Business Desktop version based on RHEL4 will be released shortly afterwards. Red Hat does not have any plans to create a retail home desktop product. The Fedora Project has its own booth at LinuxWorld.
Special thanks to Jean-Baptiste Quéru for the pictures.
I hope it was better than the few I went to over the last couple of years. I admit, I went mostly for the free swag, but would have liked to seen more desktop/home user stuff. It was mostly aimed at businesses, nothing really for the desktop/home user. Of course I’d still go for more free stuff
Matthias Ettrich talked to us about KDE, freedesktop.org and the need for a unified HIG.
Absolutely. KDE really does need a real HIG (beyond the current loose guidelines). I absolutely agree that it needs to be a “high-level” HIG, because a lot of the pixel-level details should be taken care of automatically by the toolkit. I hope something like this happens, but I’m not optimistic. For an HIG to work, there must be some general concensus by the project that an HIG is a desirable feature. Right now, there seems to be a concensus that “usability is important” but that’s a truism, not something on which action can be taken.
So Microsoft decided not to attend LinuxWorld this time or did they?
Nope. http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/events/12SFO04A/exposition/ex…
I believe there will be a lot of activity in the usability front from Akademy.
And if you follow kde-usability, a very nice group of people is being formed. Stay tuned.
The Novell, Ximian and SuSE booths were under the same roof at LinuxWorld. We talked with two Mono guys who showed us MonoDevelop running, and a program which is able to load the Gecko module and create a functional browser in under 35-40 lines of code.
I didn’t know that the gecko module was seperated from Mozilla?
Does this mean epiphany or galeon could compile without the need for mozilla suite to be installed?
It’s C# bindings to the gecko engine that has to be already installed.
While pixel values are not exacly needed, there needs to be something. If they want to do something like the gnome hig they need a way to make the spacing in dialogs exacly the same in every application. To be universal it would need the spacing values cannot be internal to the toolkit. They should really define some global variables for the different spacers and dictate where each spacer should be put.
I apologise I am not fully familiar with gecko. But my past understanding was that Mozilla suite needed to be installed also.
RE: Gecko module?
By John Blink (IP: —.smelb1.vic.optusnet.com.au)
It does. When you install mozilla you are also installing gecko. Currently there is no way to install gecko seperatly then mozilla, but this will probably take place around mozilla 2.0 or something like that in the semi-far future.
So while epiphany/galeon/mono bindings only use gecko and dont use mozilla, currently they come installed as one.
Okay thanks for clearing that up
Those are great pictures. Eugenia, what digital camera did Jean-Baptiste use? Thanks.
Camera: Canon 10D
Lens: Canon 17-40/4L
Flash: Canon 420EX with Lumiquest Pocket Bouncer
For the gory details, this was shot at ISO 400, 1/90 f/5.6, with -1 stop of flash exposure compensation. Metered ambient light was between 1/20 and 1/45 at f/5.6 depending on the location. In retrospect I should probably have shot at ISO 800.
I would have liked to bee there to take a look at the Lycoris and Xandros booths, I’m saving up for a copy of Desktop/LX 1.4 deluxe but if Xandros has some interesting new developer tools (unless I misread something here) I might try their ditribution again.
Does anyone know where I could find better coverage of the event, especially the Lycoris and Xandros booths.
Thanks.
What exactly do you want to know?
How are the Free Software Projects doing? How big was their pavillion compared to the whole exhibition?
Isn’t it funny that the new version of their interface guidelines says to avoid icons depicting only hands or feet but their project logo shows a feet?
Free Software Foundation shows in one of the pictures. It was 2 people on the .org Pavillion, a very small booth. I didn’t talk to them, because I only stayed in the expo for 1.5 hours so I had to hand-pick the people I talked to.
> Button order and pixel spacing are details of an
> implementation, they are styling issues and adhere to
> personal usage patterns based on ones’ experience. I am
> looking more for a HIG that really guides you on how to
> create usable applications”,
Matthias, you are completely right! And I’m sure that aKademy with its hundreds of KDE developers being present on one single spot will be a great and exciting chance to start such an effort. I’d like to remind people that the first KDE usability style guide was created during the KDE II meeting in 1999 which served as one of the sources for the Gnome HIG.
Was Lindows there?
Probably not, their keeping quiet on Linspire 5 and the upcoming business version.
BTW: Will Eugenia be present at aKademy?
I am afraid not (for various reasons).
Release was supposed to be Q2 2004, but has since been pushed back to Q3. Is it coming? Is it on display there? What ipaqs (ver no.???) will they support?
Actually the first (very minimal) guidelines were created by me for KDE 1. I think this was even before the first KDE I conference. Here’s a link via archive.org.
http://web.archive.org/web/19981202200616/developer.kde.org/kdestd/…
The thing is, KDE really doesn’t need a pixel-level HIG, which is what a lot of the Gnome HIG actually is. KDE dialogs, menus, widgets, etc. all inherit from the KDE and QT classes anyway, so the drawing and response aspects are dealt with by the toolkit and the KDE extensions.
As a developer, I just ask for a menu bar, define which menus I want, and their entries. If it is better to have a two pixel dead border around a menu, rather than 3px, then that can be dealt with by KDE and QT, not me as a developer. And if anyone eventually decides that 3px is actually better, then it can be changed back in KDE, automatically changing the way *all* applications draw menus.
This is similarly important in the cases of things like toolbar icon text, where some people like it, and some don’t. A quick KDE switch in the control panel, and both sets of users can be happy, and the application developer doesn’t even need to think about it, because the libraries do it for him/her.
Which is why KDE and QT really don’t need a pixel-level HIG, and Matthias is right that some higher-level guidelines on design are more helpful. The KDE development guidelines help quite a bit, but a comprehensive usability starter text book that can give good tips to developers for all platforms and environments would be a real boon to all computer science.
Sorry I misread the article, I thought Xandros was rolling out their own developer tools but it turns out it was just another version of their distribution.
I would like to see a picture of the screen on the Lycoris computer seen in one of the pictures though, I have not found any screenshots of Desktop/LX 1.4 anywhere and I’m considering buying a copy.
Thanks.
Browse through the sneak peeks – http://www.lycoris.com/sneakpeek/ – and you’ll see plenty.