Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

New Nautilus Next (GNOME Files App) Mockups

Allan Day, UX Designer at Red Hat and GNOME contributor, posted an updated set of designs for the GNOME Files app, which he calls Nautilus Next.

In the mockups (this is not real code yet and it can change later on), a new lists and grids design is presented, in which:
  • the thumbnails are larger and clearer;
  • the grids are responsive;
  • the lists have thumbnails and separators between rows to aid readability.

Nautilus Next mockups

GNOME Shell Labeled Workspaces Mockup


WebUpd8 reader Nanley Chery has submitted a very interesting proposal for labeled / tagged workspaces to the GNOME Shell mailing list.

New / Updated GNOME Application Designs (Mockups)

The GNOME developers are working on new application designs for Music, Photos, Chat, Transfers, Weather, Web, Mail, Calendar, Videos, Maps, Boxes (application for accessing other computer systems or images) and Notes as well as a redesign for Documents and Contacts. Here are a few very interesting mockups:

GNOME Music
Music

Unified Messaging Menu / MeMenu On The Way [Mockup]

Messaging Menu MeMenu

According to a recent update to the Ubuntu Wiki Messaging Menu page, the MeMenu will be integrated into the Messaging Menu. Further more, the MeMenu Ubuntu wiki page now says it's obsolete and will be replaced "by an IM status section in the messaging menu", which makes it pretty clear that the MeMenu and Messaging Menu unification is about to happen.

GNOME Shell Activity Journal (With Zeitgeist) Videos

Akshay Gupta, a GSoC student, has posted some very interesting videos in which he shows the current progress of integrating Activity Journal (powered by Zeitgeist) into GNOME Shell:

Community Proposed Unity Design

Arian van Gend is an Ubuntu user who has started a project to gather community ideas for Unity with the intent to present it to the Unity design team.  But before doing that, he wants some feedback from you.

Gnome 3 Menu Mockups

Some applications are removing the traditional menus (see Firefox, Chrome and so on) so a page has been created to discuss possible changes to the GNOME 3 menus.

Let's take a look at some of the mockups available so far.


[Poll] Do You Want Customizable Categories In Synapse?

Synapse

Do you like Synapse and want to help? Alberto, one of the Synapse developers wants to make the Synapse categories customizable but before proceeding, he wants to hear your opinion about it so head over to Alberto's blog and check out his mockup, then vote! You can also leave a comment telling him if you like it or what he can do to improve it.

I want customizable Categories, do you?

Unity Video Mockup: Better Menus, Social Networking Widget Layer

Frederico Araújo Mendes has created a very interesting Unity mockup (video) in which he proposes better menus and a social networking widget layer.

In Frederico's Unity, you have a regular dock with some fixed icons and an area for items you open / pin. Clicking the Ubuntu logo in the top left corner will flip the "dock" (just like it was in the "2 sided dock" mockups) and here you'll have basically all the regular menu categories, but displayed on the dock.

Mockups: Add / Remove Workspaces In Unity

Ubuntu 11.04 lacks a way to manage multiple workspaces. Sure, there is a workspace switcher, but no easy way to add or delete workspaces and doing this from CCSM is not easy to find and it can't be used to add/remove workspaces on the fly.

A while back, there was a very interesting mockup that was rejected for Unity but something similar was then added in Gnome Shell. But maybe something simpler has a better chance.

WebUpd8 reader Georgi came up with a very simple way of adding or removing workspaces which you can see below (this is just a mockup!):

More Unity "2 Sided Dock" Mockups [Ubuntu 11.04]

Unity
(This is just for presentation - see the mockup links below)

David Reichling posted some new mockups for the Unity dock in a comment on our initial Unity "2 sided dock" post but since not everybody reads the comments, here are the new mockups:

1 Dock:
2 Docks:
The mockups are pretty self-explainatory so check out the links above (and don't forget to click the Ubuntu logo in the top left corner!) to see Marc's new ideas.

Unity "Two-Sided Dock" Mockup

There's a long thread on the Ayatana mailing list about the upper-left Ubuntu button in the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04. Currently, this button will open Dash. But there are also two shortcuts in the launcher which trigger Dash (Applications / Files Places) which make the Ubuntu button redundant - this lead to some new ideas for the upper-left Ubuntu button behavior.



Unity two sided dock mockup

One very interesting idea was posted by Marc Lajoie and he calls it "two-sided dock". Here's how it's supposed to work in Marc Lajoie own words:

Unity Mockup: Menu Integrated In The Window Titlebar

One of the design goals of Unity is to reduce the clutter of the desktop, another is to use space more efficiently.

We hide the menu by default in Unity because the menu provides no useful information to which you can refer just by looking at it, but it puts a lot of detail on the screen which is visual clutter. So, we’ve taken the view that the menu is there if you need it (by moving the mouse to it or pressing Alt) but otherwise isn’t in your view.

Many modern applications are doing without a menu altogether, so in our view, this is a step towards the future, and it will encourage application developers to think about their interfaces and make them more usable by design rather than depending on the crutch of a menu.

The text above is a quote from Mark Shuttleworth is which he talks about the reasons behind the decision to put the menu on the top panel and set it to autohide.


The idea


Based on this, Ubuntu user Andrea Azzarone came up with an idea/mockup to integrate (with autohide) the menu bar in the title bar for ummaximized windows:

Unity global menu in titlebar mockup

More LibreOffice Mockups: Citrus UI

Speaking of LibreOffice, WebUpd8 reader Nathan Moos mentioned some refreshing mockups called Citrus UI (please note that these are not official mockups!).

Citrus tries to remain somewhat familiar while brining more logic by reorganizing things differently - such as the File menu which currently holds commands that are in no way related to the current file. Further more, the menus are contextual meaning you won't get any grayed-out menus and instead, they are hidden by default.

But you won't really understand until you see some actual mockups so here goes:

Libreoffice Citrus mockups

LibreOffice citrus mockups

LibreOffice User Interface Mockups (With Sidebar)

Paulo José posted some very interesting LibreOffice UI mockups at DeviantArt for which he says the main inspiration was the Blender UI:

LibreOffice UI mockup

Unified Me Menu And Messaging Menu Mockups; Ubuntu May Get A "Silent" Mode

There is a discussion going on @ Ayatana mailing list regarding the merge of Me Menu (the applet that displays your name, used to set your status) and Messaging Menu (Chat, Email, etc.) and mockups have already started to be posted:


1. Unified Me Menu and Messaging Menu indicator by mockups by Saleel Velankar:

Unified Me Menu Messaging Menu mockups

Unity Applications View Mockups

WebUpd8 reader Jorge Guerrero sent us an email with a link to a PDF (which was posted by Vincent Moulin @ Ayatana mailing list) that has some very interesting Unity applications view mockups:

Unity applications view mockups

Gnome Shell Automatic Workspaces Mockup (Tiled View Follow-Up)

This is getting more interesting every day!

A while back we've told you about an interesting Unity mockup for managing multiple workspaces that automatically creates the workspaces and always keeps an empty workspace so you don't have to create the workspaces yourself (and you always have the number of workspaces that you actually need).

Unfortunately, Mark Shuttleworth didn't like the idea (at least the way it was described back then) so it seems like we won't have this in Unity. But on the other hand, it looks like we'll have it in Gnome Shell (not exactly the same, but the same concept is being used). Read on!


Tiled View: New Gnome Shell Mockup

A new Gnome Shell mockup shows how the old Gnome Shell behavior (which is actually still the current Gnome Shell behavior) and the new Overview-Layout Gnome Shell branch can work together, bringing both innovation and usability (called "Tiled view"):

Interesting Unity Concept For Managing Multiple Desktops [Mockups]

Now that Unity will be used by default in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, it's been getting a lot of attention and there are discussions going on about if and how the Global Menu (AppMenu) will behave on the desktop, a better way of managing multiple desktops and many other subjects. One such discussion drew my attention and I though I'd share it with you.