SpringDesk, the new open source project I am starting, it’s eyes set on the market of the desktop manager, making one that is animated and fun to use. So, without further ado…
Introducing a mockup of a project I’m going to be working on for a while, under the tentative name of: SpringDesk
Note: This is a mockup made in Inkscape, not a screenshot.
Why? Well, I’ve always had my gripes with the current ‘desktop’ of the Linux Desktop. It’s either like KDE4 where it can be annoying and get in your way (sorry, however it is improving) or GNOME where there is little functionality. SpringDesk strives to achieve a balance between the two, being subtle and being functional.
The name reflects the nature of the application. Firstly, it is going to be very iPhone-like, because that interface is just perfect (I don’t know how well it might scale to a modern desktop). The iPhone’s interface is known internally to Apple as ‘SpringBoard’ (and the name has been played on by extensions like ‘SummerBoard‘ and ‘WinterBoard‘), and hence the name of this project is derived from that. Also, I intend to make it fun and springy as well, putting that ‘Spring’ into it.
Planned Features? So far:
- Written in Clutter and Python (So, you’ll need DRI2 and / or nvidia to run the final product along with compiz)
- Plugin System (well, duh!)
- ‘Shelves’ feature, put stuff into ‘shelves’ away from the desktop to unclutter it (for neat-freaks like myself)
- Single click on an icon previews it, perhaps some integration with Gloobus later on
- Animated wallpaper, clutter animations, video, etc
- __COMPIZ_WALLPAPER_SUPPORTED spec, so that it works with the wallpaper plugin
- Settings manager
Looks great! If I understand it right, you have those “tabs” on the sides and corners that expand to give you new deskspace for apps or whatever. Currently my desktop is just full of random files that clutters my background image; sticky notes; and I used to have some gadgets. But at end of the day, I still see the desktop as a place for a bunch of files. It would be cool if I could hide these and the desktop becomes like a homepage/dashboard where I can do lots of things from there rather than leave that up to the taskbar/menubar/cario thing.
They are like drawers, so you can hide all the stuff you don’t want to sort out (like me)
hey,
that looks fantastic!! you might just convince you to use linux as my main OS, rather than just a backend
when do we started? (in light gnome-suck I mean shell)
wow I was so excited my grammar was poor! D:
when do we “get” started? (in light “of” gnome-suck “,” I mean shell)
Well sam is working really hard on the compiz port at the moment but maybe some of us should do some work for him. Not that I can as I can’t really code at the moment.
How about a panel? Will you do that too?
I don’t like the gnome-panel very much because sometimes the objects doesn’t place themselves on the right position. The KDE-panel is just too much and so is AWN in panel-mode.
Xfce-panel is the one for me, but I would understand if yours wouldn’t look like that. I guess yours would be written with clutter too.
Anyways, good luck! I really hope it gets better than gnome-shell (at least how it looks now).
I won’t call myself an expert, but with the rewrite in C++ I’m willing to pitch in a lot where possible!
how about mouse over warp like stuff: [mouse makes waves] Mouse gestures would be a nice feature as well. there are already programs that make art out of music, so if the 2 features are combined, it might be awesome.
hey this post is kinda old. What happen?