GNOME Designer Allan Day has shown off various updated designs for potential future GNOME applications.
Amongst the designs being worked on by the GNOME Design team is a more intuitive ‘view’ for browsing through your music files.
It’s unclear at this early stage whether the ‘Music’ design would be a revamped version of Rhythmbox or an entirely new application, but Allan writes that they’d ‘love to work with existing project contributors if they are willing.’
Also sketched up is a revamped Chat client (below, and much like my dream one), the addition of a new Notes tool; a ‘beautiful, streamlined’ Mail client; ‘Boxes’ virtual machine; and a whole host more.
And before you fear these are just pretty pictures never to see realisation Allan writes that ‘developers [are] stepping up to work on them’.
Utilities and allsorts
Other design-related items being worked on include a new dictionary (think simple), a new ‘credentials’ application for managing various accounts (below); and an improved version of the default GNOME font ‘Canterall’.
Designs for more user-friendly ‘app crash’ reporting are also in the works: –
‘Going places’
The ‘core app’ designs represent more than simply the creation of creating a set of user-friendly applications or revamps. They show that GNOME is emboldening itself as a platform rather than an assembly of various parts.
Focusing on providing users with a ‘core’ set of applications that look good, work similarly and are tightly integrated into ones desktop gives Linux another valuable string to its bow.
Whilst the versatility and choice Linux provides is part of its success, that ‘cohesive’ feel found on other OS desktops, particularly that of OS X, has been somewhat lacking.
Ubuntu’s Unity and elementary’s Pantheon desktops all make inroads towards this aim, but with GNOME there is the muscle behind all aspects of the desktop experience: from applications to the way crashes are handled.
GNOME is tasking itself to ‘fill in the holes’ of usability to deliver what, from the designs above and the code already released, could end up being the most dependable user desktop – Linux or other – currently available.
For more on the application designs above, and also a whole heap more, check out the GNOME wiki @ live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/
Via Allan Day