Playing with Big Board

[Colin Walters]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Hi
>
> I have been running Big Board ever since it was brought up on this 
> list.  Some questions and observations:
>
> Is this meant to replace both the top and bottom GNOME panels? I don't 
> see a equivalent of a task bar if it's meant to replace them both.

It's meant to replace the top panel.  The bottom panel will be the task bar.
> Why hasn't the package been submitted for review? 

It depends on hippo-canvas which is awaiting a sponsor.
> The color on the panel is a plain white and doesn't match the rest of 
> GNOME system colors. 

I think GNOME upstream was talking about moving to white.  But, true.  
It does need more visual design.
> I see no way to move the panel around either. I can understand the 
> lack of a quit option if it is meant to replace the panel.

The former will hopefully be added soon.  As for a quit I'd like to be 
able to minimize it to the bottom panel basically or the like,
but it needs some interaction design there.
>
> 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.
> The icons including facebook, flickr etc doesn't have any tooltips. 
> The functionality of deskbar is not obvious.
>
Hm, tooltip functionality seems to have broken in the canvas recently. 

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?
> The more link on applications launches a side panel. The descriptions 
> near the search button sometimes overflows the boundary. Example: 
> Epiphany.
Yeah, I hope to fix that soon.
> Installing a new application via the menu launches a command line yum 
> command. Though it works this is crude. You should be using the Yum 
> API and integrating with Pirut instead. 

Right.
> Clicking on another area of the desktop doesn't close this menu or 
> even move it away which is annoying.
>

Hm; did you expect clicking elsewhere to close it?  What outside of the 
desktop context did you want to switch to?
> There are three sections - applications, photos and calendar. If i 
> don't intend to use any or all of these sections in the panel there is 
> no way to remove them although clicking on it minimizing the section 
> within the panel.
>

Yeah, portfolio management is something we will need to add, but I think 
in the short short term we are going to get rid of the calendar stock 
and replace it with a people stock which should be more useful.