1. Desktop layout

1.1. Grouped icons

This is something I have been thinking about for a long time.

The way icons are organized on the desktop on all the desktops I've used so far have been very non-similar to how humans actually organize their icons.

When a human wants to organize their icons they tend to use groups and to restrict where the icons of a group can be and have an idea about how they are layed out. Desktops have one or two ways of organizing icons -- both of them revolve around straight line. Either horizontal or vertical lines.

The idea is that each icon group has it's own space where it can display icons. Each group also has it's own layout policy which organizes the icons in a certain manner. Icons can be assigned to groups either manually or by attributes such as mime-type, size, time data, name or anything else. A group should be able to layout icons in more than just lines -- circles, trianbles and rectangles are just a few ways of doing layout.

A few problems with this method of organizing the icons are apparnt. A group may require more space than it's been given. This can be solved in several ways.

• The least elegant would to make each groups a subwindow of the main desktop window and have each group contain scrollbars. This is very unelegant and I doubt that I would like it myself.
• Another method would be to have only one active, expanding the active group and repressing all other groups (think of it as a zoom function).
• Yet another method, perhaps in combination with one of the two listed above, would be to automatically resize and move the icon group spaces - will only work to the extent that there is free space left on the desktop.

I think that this combines very well with the idea of Circular Menus, but it would not fit well in the 2.5D Desktop ideas (it might be a real solution to this idea, however).

1.2. Dynamic desktop elements

Instead of just consisting a series of static icons, the desktop could host various kinds of dynamic elements, managed by applications and daemons through a D-Bus interface.

For instance:

• An e-mail application icon could show a small text below it reading "3 new messages".
• An music player application icon could show the title of the track currently playing.
• An IM application icon could change in coloring, according to online status, and show the number of contacts online.
• An download application icon could feature a small progress bar indicating how far the current download is.

Since this would probably have to be implemented in Nautilus anyway, it might as well work for common folders as well.

For instance, I could have a "Music" folder featuring the title of the current track, the progress of my current music download and of course a folder containing my music files. When feeling groovy (e.g. at a party with my laptop), I would simply open this "Music" folder, and everything I need would appear in one window.