Activity Launch Notification

[Greg Smith (gregmsmi)]

Hi Eben,

Thanks for the comment and for covering all the bases.

I'm not sure what zoom level means or what the frame will look like in
this case. Regardless, if the kids can still launch other activities you
may want to check this design to ensure it covers the basic challenge
raised by Carol in the SouthBronx class. That is, does it prevent kids
from clicking on lots of things because they run out of patience while
waiting for the first to load then end up with too many activities
running and the whole system slows to a crawl?

My impression is that it will help a lot. Still, it does sound like a
good candidate for a trial with a few real kids. If you can mock it up,
maybe Carol can take it back to the class for a sanity check.

Its certainly better than the blinking icon so even without a trial you
should probably just do it. Seems like a sure win unless there is some
other negative side effect (greater memory or disk usage, launch time
much longer, harder to code new activities, other?).

My 2 cents. Thanks for sharing the design idea on the list.

BTW I am starting to ask users if they like the "hot corners" frame
popup thingy. Let me know if you are open to feedback on that and if you
have any alternative design proposals to share or specific questions you
want answered. 

Thanks,

Greg S

-----Original Message-----
From: Eben Eliason [mailto:eben.eliason at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 10:35 AM
To: Greg Smith (gregmsmi)
Cc: devel at lists.laptop.org
Subject: Activity Launch Notification

>  What if the activity "hangs"?
>
>  I have seen that several times with Xaos fractal builder activity and

> possibly others. I remember one case in Nepal where it took 20 minutes

> to launch eToys.
>
>  I think the UI suggestion is great and will help prevent kids from  
> clicking on many activities while they wait for the first to launch.
>  Just want to cover the case where the first one takes a very long 
> time  or doesn't launch at all. We need a way to abort (kill -9?) or 
> go on  with other work if the activity is not coming up.

Well, there are two parts to this problem.

First, this launching screen will take the place of the activity zoom
level for the launching activity, before the activity window itself
appears. The Frame will remain available, allowing the kids to switch
away from the launch, in order to continue working in another activity,
launch additional activities, or browse the other zoom levels.  As such,
they'll never be "locked in".

Second, there's the issue of "force stopping" activities.  I brought
this up as something I'd like to support a while back, but found that it
is complicated by the manner in which activities are launched, since we
don't necessarily know the process ID it's running under during launch
(or something like that...Marco can clarify).  In any case, if we can do
it, we should, offering a "Stop" button in the palette for the launching
activity.  If we can't, it's still not a showstopper, since it's
possible to switch away, and the launch will timeout eventually,
preventing the pulsing icon from forever haunting the Frame.

- Eben