[ros-general] ReactOS UI Team - Concept, Plan, and: help wanted

[Mikko Tikkanen]

Aye. I'm still in. Just have been a tad busy. I've been watching my
mail but that's about it but since I started my school few weeks ago I
have more time on my hands. At least when project deadlines aren't
pushing too close.
The school also has new advantages; since I'm studying UI/usability
design I could do some actual user testing, with live subjects. I
could also get artists involved as the schools also has art teaching.

-mikko

2005/10/6, Aleksey Bragin <aleksey at studiocerebral.com>:
> -Concept-
> I am here to remind you of a post that was made in the ReactOS user forum,
> written by crappish (Mikko Tikkanen). In it the author wrote of the need of
> a consistent user interface, the need of people that actually have knowledge
> of such things, and how these people would have to be in charge of enforcing
> such an interface. They should be familiar with Windows, know how to make
> things accessible and newbie-friendly, and have enough creativity to improve
> on existing concepts. In addition to that, there should be someone who
> represents this team and can interface it with the rest of the project, and
> make sure everything is the way everyone wants it to be. Now, this
> representative has been chosen. But there is no team to back him up!
>
> -Recruiting-
> So getting down to business. The UI team is recruiting two kinds of people.
> Primarily: Programmers who have sufficient knowledge to hack other people's
> code, even if said code is rooted deeply in system libraries. Skill in
> writing user interfaces and piecing together dialog resources. No advanced
> skills beyond that required. This is most important, since developers in
> this category can get straight to business and get started on improving
> ReactOS.
> Secondarily: Interface concept designers who have advanced knowledge of
> human interfacing, easy access, logical positioning, and the creativity to
> improve and expand on existing ideas. This is a secondary category because
> a) right now there is little to do in this respect, b) there are already two
> (counting Mikko?) of these people in ReactOS, and c) for every 1 concept
> designer, there can be up to 10 implementing developers.
> Even more appreciated, would be someone who fits both gloves and can write
> code AND design interfaces. Sadly, experience proves that these two traits
> don't usually come together in one person.
>
> And! Just as important, though not actively recruited, I welcome icon
> designers, graphic designers, font designers (that includes you, wierd_w!),
> sound effect samplers, and programmers willing to implement missing UI
> features (think of things such as extended cursor/icon support, alpha
> blitting, runtime freetype configuration, recycle bin functionality, control
> panel, autorun support, etc), on individual application (mail me at
> mf at mufunyo.net).
>
> -Plan-
> The plan(tm) to kickstart the UI team is as follows:
> Our first goal will be to make the surface experience of ReactOS familiar.
> Surface in this context means the things a user will see during and after
> bootup. This mainly involves modifying explorer; to display a consistent and
> familiar start menu, and to show a friendly explorer when My Computer or the
> Explore link is opened. This means making all the surface icons consistent
> (my task), modifying explorer's interface (the 'programmer' category), and
> figuring out the best layout for the start menu (the 'designer' category).
> There is no plan past this first task, because I cannot predict how small or
> big the team is going to be, what feedback we are going to get, and how fast
> things will move.
>
>
>
> And that's it for my first big announcement. I hope this will get some
> discussion going, and some balls rolling. I would also like to take this
> opportunity to request a mailing list for the UI team, this should have been
> set up right after the coordinator vote was over, but it wasn't-- so to
> whoever's in charge of that, I count on you. Thanks.
> Please reply to this mail only on the general list or to me in person (if
> you're not on the list and only get digests), it is only crossposted in
> ros-dev to get a wider range of attention.
>
>
> Thanks for reading,
> mf.