[sugar] First time Sugar user's experiences

[Eben Eliason]

> >>> Would there be any way that feedback is given to the user after he
> >>> clicks a button? Something like "Activating <activity name>", of
> >>> similar.
> >>
> >> We should add startup notification support. Using a different cursor
> >> like GNOME to notify the user about this sounds better than a text
> >> label to me.

I agree we certainly need feedback for this sort of thing.  For
starters, the icon of the selected activity should immediately appear
in the ring.  Perhaps we can apply some small animation to this
activity icon to indicate that it is starting up.  Marco, could you
use HSV for the icon color, and modulate the S(aturation) on a sin
curve so the color pulses betwen, say, 0 and 192 until the activity
starts, at which point it slides up to 255?

> >> Though we will also have to improve startup time considerably.

Also a good plan, but that one's up to you. =)

> > If a picture is pressed, e.g. the picture of the web browsing
> > activity, at first I saw nothing happening. I am used to abutton, when
> > pressed, to visible sink down in the screen, and when the mouse is
> > released, to come back up again. This is how for example Gtk does it.
> > It would give better feedback to the child clicking on something if
> > something visible happened at the very clicking moment, independent of
> > any startup notification support that might be added.

We also intend to address these issues.  Unfortunately we just haven't
had a chance to spec these details yet, since there are so many large
scale design concerns that affect the overall user experience of such
a drastically new UI.

I do hope to increase the haptic feedback of the system which, since
the design strives for flatness and no highlights/bevels/gradients,
might be a bit tricky.  But the sinking you mention is a good place to
start, for sure.

- Eben