My Thoughts

Posts Tagged ‘icons’

I just found a project that aims to provide complete themes for gnome desktop (i.e. GDM, GTK, Metacity, Emerald, Icons and wallpaper) which are very cool the project is called Bisigi whatever that means!

any way there is like 10 complete sets at the moment but there is more to come to install on ubuntu 9.04 you need the following:

1 – Add the key for the repository

Open a terminal and do:

2 – Add the repository

Add those lines at the end of your sources.list (always in a terminal):
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

• pour jaunty (9.04)
• pour intrepid (8.10)
• pour hardy (8.04)

3 - Install Themes

Then open a terminal and do: (this command install all themes. If you want to install only one theme, go look here)
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install zgegblog-themes
or click on apt://zgegblog-themes

All the problems in software development starts with at least one of the following:

• Low budget.
• Limited time.
• Limited resources.
• Skipping research and design phase.

Now one of the above will be more than enough to blow up your project for instance lets take a look at the research and design phase if you skipped the research phase you might end up re inventing the wheel and developing a workflow engine while you can use one of the already existing Open Source frame work such as OS workflow which has a dedicated team for developing it and test it, and also it is wildly used and have a good community that you can get help from and last but not least saving much time which will be more useful if used it to focus on your project requirements…etc.

In SWING application the user experience could define the success or the faulier in of your project, is this true? well not necessarily as it depends on the type of your application, the type of users , and as far as I know people don’t pay more for good look(in applications of course)! but a good design does not include only nice looks it also has re usability, extensibility and maintainability  for your application, finally having a good look for your application will promote it…

having sayed this lets look at the dos and don’ts in GUI development:

• Avoid heavily saturated colours, as it will make it even harder to look at the screen!
• Always use native fonts of your OS like Serif and do not manipulate fonts decoration as it could look nice on your machine but it will be very ugly on others machines!
• When using icons try to have them all from the same Icon set or at least match them in a proper way!
• Avoid nested borders and favour using separators.
• Align your components horizontally and vertically.
• Give information when needed.
• Make validation when needed.

For bidirectional applications you have more to care about like:

• Planning to have a mechanism for loading and using multiple translations.
• Providing a mechanism to have your layout flipped according to the language direction.
• using the right UI components that will help you accomplish your task.

Next we will be focusing on bidirectional development and providing some tricks to do this.

Today’s applications are getting more and more complicated and user experience is the main focus to have a successful product, And we all know the huge boost in user experience that web 2.0 has made with it is splashy interfaces and AJAX functionality, but what if the application is not web-enabled what if it is SWING application? is it possible to develop such an application with a good user experience? hopefully this is what I am going to highlight in this series of posts…

My plan is to make the posts in this series on a regular basis but lets leave this to my quality time…

The main aspects am going to talk about are:

• Main features that will enhance a user experience.
• Design Challenges Architects encounter while developing such applications.
• Best practices in making a successful UI interfaces.
• Making flexible bidirectional SWING application.
• Making translatable SWING application.
• Data validation on spot or on submit!
• Data binding between UI Components and application backend beans.
• Theming SWING applications.

This and maybe other subjects will be covered in this series Insha’ Allah.

Till then

This is suggestion of a colmplete pack for theming you Ubuntu to have a smooth and elegant black look and feel:

• GDM: Of course you need an elegant GDM like the one I’ve just created . DOWNLOAD IT and you can install it by going to:

System –> Administration –> Login Window

Go to “Local” tab and press “Add”, Navigate to the place where you downloaded the GDM archive. select it and close. now you have the GDM is installed you can select it from the dialogue and close.

• Icon pack: Human – O2 is a very nice Icon pack with many options, DOWNLOAD IT then extract the archive file you will find a “install.sh” file double click on it and follow the instructions to install it I have chosen the Manilla folders…

• GTK-2 : you will like the moomex theme when you see it, DOWNLOAD IT and install it by going to:

System –> Preferences –> Appearance

Click on install, Navigate to the place where you downloaded the theme archive. add it then the theme will suggest a font accept it, and we’re set…

• Emerald theme: am using a theme called radial, DOWNLOAD IT and install it using Emerald theme manager.
• Wallpaper can be found here.

I like it very much, hope you too will like it

Open Office 3.0 is now out with many new improvements for more about the new features you can visit this link, and also it can be downloaded from this link. but am here now to give a tip on how can enhance the look of your Open Office on Ubuntu, so lets start:

First you need to go synaptic:

System --> Administration --> Synaptic Package Manager

then you need to search for

openoffice.org style

or something like that, now you will find many packages like tango, crystal, galaxy, industrial…

download anyone you like and then open openoffice and go to:

Tools –> Options –> OpenOffice.org –> view

then in the field

icon size and style

you can choose the styles you previously downloaded am using crystal

here are some screen shots for my open office: