Playing with Big Board

[Rahul Sundaram]

Colin Walters wrote:
>> Is big board tied to mugshot? What if I don't have a mugshot account? 
>> Trying to change the pic shown on the identity, application 
>> descriptions, more button in calendar etc launches mugshot pages.
> We're using Mugshot as the server basis, yep.  We're using it as 
> basically a public service where we can store data online like the 
> preferred applications and photo.

So what happens when I don't have a net connection or just don't want to 
have a mugshot account? Can big board cope up with that and produce a 
reasonably good user experience similar with what we have with our 
current "offline desktop" if you will.

> Can you explain a bit more about what you expected the search box to do, 
> but didn't?  Or it did that you didn't expect?

It looks like a text box though the icon tool tip says "Show previously 
used actions" and I tried typing in browser (some grayed text that says 
search here or a title "Search" might make it more obvious) which showed 
up a list of applications with the word browser on them which was 
expected but there was some entries like login photo which was 
unexpected. It produces a search list from yahoo which was unexpected 
since I don't yahoo for searches. I couldn't figure out why or how I 
could change it to use a different search engine or just turn off web 
searches.  I was expecting it to pick up the search engine settings from 
Firefox.

In general I find applications unexpecting launching web pages and 
grabbing focus annoying. Reminds me of advertising popups that distract 
me from whatever task I was set to do.  Big board does that and does 
that unexpectedly. For example, more in the applications stock launches 
a hybrid between a menu and a panel while other similar sections 
launches mugshot pages.

I think having more settings within the application itself while picking 
up whatever settings it needs from mugshot, flickr or whatever service 
on the background would be better. Changing my photo id, adding some 
applications stock, installing ,uninstalling one from the system via the 
menu etc.

I want my local desktop experience to be coherent connected applications 
rather than a loose collection of web pages linked from a application 
which is what big board feels like.

> Hm; did you expect clicking elsewhere to close it?  What outside of the 
> desktop context did you want to switch to?

Yes. A normal menu would close when I click elsewhere. I think the GNOME 
slab menu which looks very similar in structure does the same. I was 
trying to access another application via a icon on the desktop or just 
read my mail instead of big board menu staying on top. It would have 
been ok if it didn't close as long as it would just moved out of my way 
and stay on the background when I click something.

Rahul