Gizmos
Contents
How we present these depends a bit on how they are used. Let's discuss that a bit.
Relevant Art
GNOME 2 Applets
Most of this section is from Owen's DDL email.
Can mostly be classified as one of:
- Information display
- Toys
- Specialized UI Enhancements
- Crack
- Parts of the core UI
- Desktop design copouts
Information Display
We have a few applets that display information to the user; the set of conceivable applets that do this is almost indefinitely extensible (look at available Google gadgets), but not within the scope of a 24-pixel panel. (Note that you have to click on 2 out of the three listed here to actually get the information.)
- Invest
- System Monitor
- Weather Monitor
Toys
These are similar to "Crack" except that their operation could easily be explained to non-geeks. (if not their existence)
- Eyes
- Fish
Specialized UI Enhancements
We also have a number of applets that add controls to the panel. Some of these are more useful than others, but they are generally genuinely useful to some set of people.
- Character Palette
- Dictionary Lookup
- Pilot Applet
- Sticky Notes
- Time Tracker
- Tomboy Notes
"Crack"
We have quite a few applets that either I don't know what they do or I'm embarrassed to know what they do. I have no trouble with this stuff existing, but it shouldn't be mixed in with useful stuff on a default install, and it's outside the scope of design.
- Brightness applet
- CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor
- Command Line
- Drawer
- Dwell Click
- Force Quit
- Inhibit Applet
- Pointer Capture
Parts of the Core UI
Quite a few of the available "applets" just make up things that we expect always to be there. The user doesn't want to remove or add them. (Obviously not everything here is part of the default panel, because of design indecision.)
- Clock
- Keyboard Accessibility Status
- Keyboard Indicator
- Main Menu
- Menu Bar
- Notification Area
- Show Desktop
- Trash
- User Switcher
- Workspace Switcher
- Window List
- Window Selector
Desktop design copouts
Then there are applets that are about making it marginally faster to do things that should be obvious and fast to do without an applet to do them. If these are useful, we've misdesigned.
- Connect to a Server...
- Disk Mounter
- Lock Screen
- Log Out...
- Run Application...
- Search for Files...
- Shutdown..
So, a large part of what we have just drops out - it's not relevant. An additional portion is best handled by something like Firefox extensions - it's great for advanced users if there is a big ecosystem of them out there. But they aren't something you design for and the programming API is probably just giving them free access to the Javascript internals of gnome-shell. This applies to the "Crack" the "Toys" and maybe even the "Specialized UI Enhancements".
And then some portion remains, and that is where design question lies. Do we want an optional sidebar? Do we want some approach where an extra layer of widgets/gadgets flies in when triggered? Could customizable displays be integrated into our existing Activities Overview in some fashion?
Clock applet
The GNOME 2 clock applet is an interesting case. It is currently or has been suggested as being access point for at least the following types of information:
- Time and date
- Calendar
- Current weather
- Weather forecasts
- Weather maps
- Weather alerts
- Timezones
- World times
- Current location
- Locations of interest
- Maps
- Appointments
- To-do items
- Alarms
Google Desktop Gadgets
The Google Gadgets page currently has thousands of items sorted into the following categories:
- News
- Tools
- Communication
- Finance
Fun & Games
- Sports
- Lifestyle
- Technology
- Holidays
They also have gadgets for webpages.
Here is my own quick categorization of the first three pages of most popular gadgets:
Clocks
- Day Night World Clock
- Analog Clock
- Digital Retro Clock
- Digital Clock
- World Daylight Alarm Clock
- Analog World Clock
- Cat Clock
Calendar
- Google Calendar
- Google Gadgets Calendar
- Simple Calendar
- Simple Calendar
- Date Display Calender
- Calendar
- leCalendar Plugin
- Google Moon Phase
- Date Display
Weather
- Weather Globe
- Weather
WeatherBug Sidebar Gadget
- Weather Gadget
Tools
- Calculator gadget
- Wikipedia Search
- Online Dictionary
- Dictionary
- Translate
- Countdown Timer
- Simple calculator
Communications
- Facebook Gadget
- Gmail Notifier
- Google Talk
System
- Wireless Signal Meter
- Fast Shutdown
- Perfomance-Meter
- Battery Meter
- CPUMeter
- CPU Smiley
- Battery Life
- Wifi Connect
- System Monitor
- Performance Power Monitor
- Laptop Check
- Windows Dock
- CD Ejection
Amusements/Toys
- Virtual Flower Pot
- Steamy
- Desktop Wallpaper Slideshow
- HOTorNOT.com Google Gadget
- Height Weight Analysis 1.0
News/Feeds
- Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Soccer News
- eBay Auction Watch
- Daily Horoscopes
- Local Headlines
Games
- Tetramino Game
- Games
VistaGames Gadget
Media
- Media Player Remote
- Music Player
- TV Set
- ((XM Online Radio))
- Web TV and Radio
- GDieTunes
- Uni FM
- Musicwheel
- gPod Controller
OS X Dashboard Widgets
Discussion
Maybe some things can be integrated into existing places in the Shell design instead of inventing a new place for them.
Maybe the clock, calendar, timezone, weather, location functionality can go into the clock/calendar (somewhat like in GNOME 2).
Maybe we can offer tool like functionality in context for selected text. Things like:
- Translate
- Calculate
- Search Google/Wikipedia
- Lookup in dictionary
- Share?
For where there is no context to operate on maybe we can enhance the alt+F2 dialog to use command like functionality:
- Alt+F2 "translate gesundheit"
- Alt+F2 "calculate 64 / 7"
- always show the google/wikipedia search buttons in alt+f2
- Alt+F2 "define mitochondria"
- ...
See Also