[Testing] [support-gang] SL meet SL! (Sri Lanka, Sugar Labs, Service Learning, Schools & Libraries, Soft Landing, Shangri-La, Silent Lucidity, etc)

[James Cameron]

On Tue, Apr 06, 2010 at 09:46:09PM +1200, Tabitha Roder wrote:
> oh wow, I thought the colour was because you had already played the
> activity, but then not all played activities changed colour so was
> confused, this might be why though some activities have colour before
> you play them and dont change colours due to playing that activity
> [...]

Indeed, it can take some time to learn what it means.

I'll explain it in more detail.

Definitions: "Start" means that a new instance of the activity with no
prior data is run.  "Resume" means that a saved instance of the activity
is extracted from the Journal and then run.

Activities are supposed to be supplied with icons that have no colour.
In the activity ring, or home view, they are shown initially as grey
stroke on white background.

Once a journal entry is created for an activity, the icon in the
activity ring changes to the colour pair of the XO person who created
the journal entry.  Left-click resumes the journal entry.  The purpose
of the colour change is to show the user that a left-click will resume,
not start.

Deleting the journal entry restores the icon to grey on white.

Right-click on the icon in activity ring shows you an option to start
the activity without resuming a journal entry.  The menu that pops up
also shows an item for each journal entry that would start the activity.

On Sugar 0.84, right-click or deleting the journal entries is the only
way to start an activity without resuming a journal entry.  The menu
item is called Start, and is white on black.

On Sugar 0.88, pressing a keyboard key (shift, perhaps) while in the
activity ring changes all the icons to grey on white; signalling that if
you shift-click an icon it will start a new activity.  The menu item as
above is still there, but it is called "Start new".

At a distance you can tell from the activity ring the general state of a
child's laptop;

- grey and white icons; no use has been made, no journal entries exist,

- single colour theme icons; they have used activities alone,

- multiple colour theme icons; they have either changed their colour
  choices, or have collaborated over network.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/