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Quick (or not so) thoughts
Pyro is the right technology
If you haven't seen it, Pyro Desktop is a cool project. Alex is spot on about developers and HTML/JavaScript in particular. It's not that are current desktop APIs are necessarily bad - but they are different. Someone who wants to code something cool that may be coming from a OS X or Windows background will have to drop down for a week while they learn the APIs.
A window manager, or...?
Now, what confused me honestly is that Pyro seems mainly to be focused on being a compositing window manager. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I don't find the desktop bling that interesting - from any source, Compiz/Pyro/whatever. Sure, it looks pretty, but at the end of the day it feels like there are just a few things (fade-in menus) that are definite improvements, and everything else is just "because we can". Maybe it's also because I'm an all-windows-maximized+alt-tab person. I also don't use workspaces.
The apps
What I thought was missing from the Pyro demo was the apps. To someone who's not a developer, it looks like a desktop theme. The Flickr feed I see on the website is more interesting to me. Certainly, if I was going to start a project like the Big Board part of the Online Desktop now, it would make a lot of sense to write it using Firefox/Pyro. I had to spend at least a solid week of work on the HTTP library in BigBoard alone. One thought is it may be interesting to embed Firefox iframes inside Big Board.
-JavaScript
If you're like me, you acknowledge JavaScript's ubiquity, but you still hate its crazy prototype "object system". Enter Google Web Toolkit. I can definitely imagine the future of application development being HTML+CSS+Java (or another sane language).
Online Desktop
Havoc had a good summary. One thing I think that should have been stressed more strongly is that in a lot of cases, being online is just a matter of changing workflow or defaults for existing regular GNOME apps, not just dropping them. For example, changing F-Spot to make it easier to get your photos online - getting your account info (or pointing you to some samples if you don't have one), but still having a good local photo tool for picking which photos to upload, fixing redeye, etc. I think there was actually a talk about this which I missed.
Hotwire
Gave a lightning talk on Hotwire and talked to a few people about it. Seemed like people were interested, but it's really hard to get people to switch. But I think it's been successful in letting me prototype out some shell ideas. I have been having some different UI ideas lately though, and am also pretty frustrated right now with the Python runtime (not the language) - the GIL is a serious brick wall for improving Hotwire.
Update - Just discovered POSH when googling for the GIL link - this may be exactly what I need.
Photos
Haven't seen many people blog their GUADEC photos (I'm sure it'll happen en masse after the conference), but I tossed my current photo set online.
Beach
Victoria square
Hackers in Etap
I had nothing but pain last year.
(Anonymous)
My list
- Expose. Definitely usable and useful, the simply best window switcher when you are working with many. Thanks, Beryl :)
- Wobbling windows. It's not bling, when you setup it to be moderate. The bending of windows gives you more indication of the moving speed and acceleration, making it actually perceivable better when you move it. It fits the model how our brain handles hints about movement better. The "wobble 5 seconds after" thing (how it's usually set up) is just plain trash though.
- Smooth scrolling in all applications. It's critically important in browsers, text editors and such where you scroll up&down for information. It makes it easier for the eye to track the lines, grasp and idea of scrolling speed and actually be able to read more already when the scrolling is going on. It's the single most important usability improvement "bling" you can ever implement.. And people like KDE project have just usually peed on it. But as Linus and his brainfarts love KDE, I suppose I shouldn't trash talk them ehh?
Google Web Toolkit
(Anonymous)
Fading Menus
And @ Anonymous, I don't consider the expose thing to be that good at window switching for many windows... Many windows look very similar, and if you increase their number they have to get smaller to fit on the screen, further reducing the differences. With a few windows it can be great, with many I find I almost always prefer text, which does not take as long to decipher. I agree on the wobbly with sensible defaults though.
(Anonymous)
Re: Fading Menus
(Anonymous)
Re: Fading Menus