| ochosi | TheSheep: i'd probably have time later today to discuss your concerns about the theme | 13:55 |
|---|---|---|
| TheSheep | ochosi: awesome | 13:55 |
| ochosi | TheSheep: one thing i wanted to mention though is that changing the theme has been on the roadmap for natty since the beginning | 13:55 |
| ochosi | https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Roadmap > new objectives | 13:55 |
| TheSheep | sure | 13:55 |
| ochosi | since there were concerns about accessibility | 13:56 |
| ochosi | also let me mention in advance that the current theme is based on the previous one and is a reworking towards more accessibility | 13:57 |
| ochosi | so i guess the real change was the one from Albatross to Bluebird, but i guess that's up for discussion | 13:57 |
| ochosi | one reason to create Bluebird was to have a bright alternative to the dark theme | 13:58 |
| ochosi | TheSheep: sorry, seems now i kinda started the discussion when i just wanted to add a short prologue... | 13:58 |
| ochosi | TheSheep: we can continue later, i have a meeting now | 14:00 |
| ochosi | TheSheep: ping | 16:38 |
| TheSheep | pong | 16:40 |
| ochosi | i'm back and i have some time for discussion now, so in case you're available... | 16:41 |
| TheSheep | ok, so let me just explain the motivation first | 16:41 |
| ochosi | k | 16:41 |
| TheSheep | sorry, distraction | 16:47 |
| ochosi | np | 16:47 |
| TheSheep | so, when you are chainging something | 16:47 |
| TheSheep | you have to look at what you are doing | 16:47 |
| TheSheep | in many cases you can just plan ahead and tell the results in advance | 16:47 |
| TheSheep | but with user interfaces that is not possible because people are too complicated and unpredictable | 16:48 |
| TheSheep | so you need a different way of telling whether the changes you are making are bringing the expected results | 16:48 |
| TheSheep | so "work on improving accessibility" is a great starting point | 16:48 |
| TheSheep | but then you need to ask yourself "how can I tell whether the accessibility has been improved?" | 16:49 |
| ochosi | mhm | 16:50 |
| TheSheep | because if you can't, you can't really be sure that you are improving it, and your changes may as well be worsening it or doing something entirely different | 16:50 |
| TheSheep | now, there are several methods of telling that | 16:50 |
| TheSheep | the simplest one is "there have been such and such issues reported, and we made changes so that the issues are not present anymore" | 16:51 |
| TheSheep | this lets you fix obvious mistakes that have been well documented | 16:51 |
| TheSheep | another one is "such and such percentage of people with disabilities have been using xubuntu before, but now more are moving to it" | 16:52 |
| TheSheep | obviously this requires some kind of poll or other source of statistics and is generally slow and inaccurate | 16:53 |
| TheSheep | but it is a kind of feedback | 16:53 |
| TheSheep | another one is user stories -- you identify a number of things you would like people to be able to perform, then measure how well they do it, and after changes, measure how another gorup performs with them | 16:54 |
| TheSheep | (or just try them out yourslef, if the improvements are obvious) | 16:54 |
| TheSheep | and last way I wanted to mention are goals -- you set yourself a goal like "sending an e-mail should require no more than 3 clicks" | 16:55 |
| TheSheep | and you verify that it was met | 16:55 |
| TheSheep | obviously, coming up with those criterions is a lot of work | 16:56 |
| TheSheep | and they are sometimes arbitrary -- that's ok, they at least show you that you are moving | 16:56 |
| ochosi | k | 16:57 |
| TheSheep | ok, so now fo the questions, I'd like to do a kind of retroactive thing | 16:57 |
| TheSheep | and aks "what has been improved" | 16:57 |
| TheSheep | ask | 16:57 |
| TheSheep | for example, there was a reported issue that the theme was too dark | 16:58 |
| TheSheep | and that issue has been resolved -- the new theme is brighter | 16:58 |
| ochosi | hm, may i comment on what you wrote above before we continue with the "list of issues"? | 16:59 |
| TheSheep | of course | 16:59 |
| ochosi | k, thanks | 16:59 |
| ochosi | so, i mostly agree with you, you can't always predict the effects of your changes | 17:00 |
| ochosi | and i guess when moving away from Albatross (as default!, it's still shipped) | 17:00 |
| ochosi | it was already a few accessibility questions and during the cycle of maverick those questions came up more and more | 17:00 |
| TheSheep | do you remember those questions? | 17:01 |
| ochosi | the direction of this move (towards more accessibility) came mostly from charlie-tca, i would say | 17:01 |
| ochosi | the panel icons weren't visible enough and i guess a few other things | 17:01 |
| ochosi | i guess they weren't properly written down | 17:01 |
| TheSheep | I can write them down in the next iteration, if that helps | 17:02 |
| ochosi | that's something you can criticize around here, that things are not always perfectly documented (but in fact you might find this in old meeting minutes, if it was mentioned there) | 17:02 |
| TheSheep | I mean issues with themes | 17:02 |
| TheSheep | I don't want to criticize | 17:02 |
| ochosi | yeah, i mean themes are just a very tiny part of "accessibility" | 17:02 |
| ochosi | well, i guess i meant to ;) | 17:02 |
| TheSheep | ah, that's another thing | 17:03 |
| ochosi | as in your example above: "how many clicks does it take" -> that's maybe a lot more importatnt | 17:03 |
| TheSheep | in my experience, when you are changing a lot of things at the smae time | 17:03 |
| TheSheep | you often can't tell which change actually brought the effect | 17:03 |
| ochosi | but with the kind of manpower the xubuntu project has atm it's something you can't even spend time on thinking about | 17:03 |
| ochosi | because you can't change those things in most cases | 17:03 |
| ochosi | about changing a lot of things at the same time: i agree, but (even though it might seem differently) i didn't do that | 17:04 |
| TheSheep | if you concentrate on one thing at a time, it often helps to pin down what was done right and what needs further improvement | 17:04 |
| ochosi | if you compare the two themes, what i changed is (colorwise): menubar, xfwm-theme, panel-color | 17:04 |
| ochosi | the rest are really smaller modifications | 17:04 |
| TheSheep | especially when our resources are limited | 17:04 |
| ochosi | i also agree on that | 17:04 |
| TheSheep | I guess I thought I would have more concrete and helpful questions | 17:05 |
| TheSheep | the bottom line is that I need to pay more attention | 17:05 |
| TheSheep | do you know where most of the ui discussions are taking place? | 17:05 |
| TheSheep | mailing list? bug tracker? | 17:06 |
| ochosi | well, either here or in #shimmer tbh | 17:06 |
| TheSheep | shimmer? | 17:06 |
| ochosi | the ml is practically dead (i know it's not a nice thing to say, but it's true...) | 17:06 |
| ochosi | and the bug tracker, hmwell, not sure that's used so much for theming issues (apart from a chromium theming bug i solved for greybird) | 17:06 |
| ochosi | shimmer is the project i'm part of | 17:07 |
| ochosi | i'm not really an official member of the xubuntu dev-team | 17:07 |
| ochosi | i'm something like a freelance contributor | 17:07 |
| TheSheep | me neither | 17:07 |
| TheSheep | I'm not even a contributor | 17:07 |
| ochosi | if you're interested in the development-part of what i'm doing you can a) either hang out in #shimmer or b) monitor these pages: http://wiki.knome.fi/ | 17:08 |
| ochosi | but it would be nice if you would test the theme and report issues you find | 17:09 |
| ochosi | feel free to ping me about that (that's the way specified in the wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Artwork/Natty ) | 17:10 |
| TheSheep | sounds interesting | 17:10 |
| TheSheep | the project, I mean | 17:10 |
| ochosi | thanks | 17:10 |
| ochosi | about the kind of feedback i collect for the theme: | 17:10 |
| ochosi | for accessibility/visibility-issues i mainly rely on charlie-tca (well, or myself of course, if something is obvious) | 17:11 |
| ochosi | he is very good at spotting those problems | 17:11 |
| ochosi | and then of course i'd be happy to get more feedback from the community, i also had a longer discussion with thorwil | 17:12 |
| ochosi | even though i couldn't resolve one of his suggestion (at least not yet) for "more vibrant colors" we discussed it | 17:13 |
| ochosi | but in general i have to search for feedback, there's hardly any | 17:13 |
| TheSheep | I will make a new install over the weekend and try to comment on specific things that I see | 17:18 |
| TheSheep | (my workstation install is too heavily customized for that) | 17:18 |
| ochosi | thanks | 17:19 |
| ochosi | a vbox install could also work | 17:19 |
| TheSheep | I need to fix my libvirt one day :) | 17:19 |
| ochosi | hehe | 17:19 |
| maciekPL | hello | 20:19 |
| TheSheep | hi maciekPL | 20:19 |
| maciekPL | I`m herejust to ask about strange bug... when i was trying to change theme of xfce something crashed and now i cannot login | 20:20 |
| TheSheep | ah, yes, one of the xfce themes is broken | 20:20 |
| maciekPL | i managet to start graphical enviroment again as root | 20:20 |
| TheSheep | don't do that | 20:21 |
| maciekPL | well, I already did that :P how i can fix it so I can use normal user again? | 20:21 |
| TheSheep | edit ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfwm4.xml | 20:21 |
| TheSheep | for that user | 20:21 |
| TheSheep | and either change the theme line or remove it | 20:22 |
| maciekPL | ok, I`ll do that and tell if it helped | 20:22 |
| maciekPL | thanks a lot ;) | 20:22 |
| mr_pouit | (this is a xorg bug, fixed in natty btw) | 20:22 |
| maciekPL | well, i downloaded an .iso image yesterday, installed it today and it was broken, so developers might want to know that | 20:23 |
| maciekPL | xubuntu 10.10 | 20:23 |
| maciekPL | ok, I edited this file, let`s see if it worked ;) | 20:24 |
| maciekPL | It worked, thank a lot! :D | 20:27 |
| maciekPL | I hope that`s the only bug I`ll find, but now I`ve got some work to do | 20:29 |
| maciekPL | thanks again ;) | 20:29 |
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