Nautilus discussion is taking place  May 12, 2010 10AM Bruxelles time.  And there is a possibility that elementary Nautilus will be part of Ubuntu, to find out more join us at freenode! Which is available online: http://webchat.freenode.net/

Along with Nautilus Seif, Ryan (author of Gwibber), and Dan Rabbit are working on AppCenter elementary’s version of the Ubuntu’s Software Center.

elementary Nautilus (note this is a mock-up)

This is Brian here with yet another post! I know you’ve been itching for more info! We are going to answer some questions today. Or at least provide some insight. First, where is Nautilus headed in elementary OS? And what are some goals we have for it? (Other than fancy and useful effects like Coverflow!) Let’s dive right in and take a look at what we’d like to see in Nautilus elementary and what is being developed at the moment.

Nautilus is a file browser as such we want to really focus on bring out all that we think a file browser should be and stay with our philosophy of “just do“. If you look at the mock-up above to the left (click it to make it big and see all the pretty!) you’ll see that we favor a much slimmer looking Nautilus.

Nautilus elementary breadcrumbs

Now let’s take a look at a mock-up Dan recently created discussing the breadcrumb functionality of Nautilus. Search is integrated into the breadcrumbs.

Here I’ll let Dan talk about those breadcrumbs:

“Nautilus should navigate to the directory as you type a path in the text entry. In this way, you won’t type an invalid path because you can clearly see that the directory or file doesn’t exist.

When you click on a breadcrumb, anything after that breadcrumb is automatically converted to text. For example given the breadcrumb “Music>Cake>Fashion Nugget” clicking on Music would give me “Music>Cake/Fashion Nugget”. Note that the text “Cake/Fashion Nugget” Should be highlighted when you click “Music”. This is because you may want to type a completely new path right away, but you may also simply want to change “Cake” to “Fake” or some other minor change.

Finally, The shortcut CTRL + L should convert everything in the pathbar to text to simulate the change it offers currently.”

As you can see from both of these mock-ups we want to simplify Nautilus elementary so that browsing can occur quickly and through an interface that isn’t cluttered. These are mostly just visual changes, but more loftier goals are planned (being dreamed up!).

Nautilus Zeitgeist

Recently Ian “ Izo” Cylkowski created some wonderful mock-ups showcasing Zeitgeist (or Gnome Activity Journal) as part of Nautilus. This is something I know that I and Dan both would love to see! Now this goal (if it happens of course, nothing is ever concrete! So don’t hold us to this!) will take some time to occur. For now some exciting developments have been occurring with Nautilus and Zeitgeist.

This video showcases only a development mock-up and test on how things would work. This is not the final implementation. Anyway the juicy bit is the video below is a test on integrating some of Zeitgeist’s functionality into Nautilus elementary!

As you can see in the video commonly accessed files and the files recently accessed in the past days are quickly accessible! (note: More info is available at Velour’s blog here.) This is by no means the end of where we’d like to see this go and we’d like to see more integration of Gnome Activity Journal and Nautilus elementary. Perhaps a button within Nautilus elementary that converts the view to the Journal? This is just the beginning and I’ll keep the updates coming.

Let us know what you think!

Get the latest Nautilus elementary here: https://code.launchpad.net/~elementaryart/nautilus-elementary/nautilus-elementary

The big changes in the new GTK are the new Metacity theme. Totem has received some customizations including some sexy new monchromes.

It also uses some of the new stuff from the latest murrine so panel text gets an etched look.

Download the latest update from PPA: https://launchpad.net/~elementaryart/+archive/elementarydesktop

Grsync

User Mover would be broken down into its functions through a wizard that would walk the user through moving from one computer to the next. It would ask you which user(s) to move, whether or not to move their settings, which folders in their home directory to move, Whether or not to move all of their installed applications, and finally if the information should be packaged up, burned to disc, or sent across the network.

Perhaps modifying rsync and creating a slicker ‘elementary’ styled interface would be a way to go? A Esync! What do you think?

We think it’s great so many are inspired by elementary! And remember feel free to share any ideas you may have that could make elementary better on our forums.

Banshee manages your music!

What does the elementary team mean when we say that we want an Operating System to “just do.”  We mean that we want to be the first to offer a desktop OS that doesn’t include any way for the user to manage files. That means no file management and no browsing files, at least not in the traditional sense and not through a file browser. How do you get to your files? We think that files should be accessed from the applications that the user will use them in. Think of how Banshee manages music and the way F-Spot manages your photos.  We think that the user shouldn’t browse their files…. but instead use them. Let the applications manage your files for you.

F-Spot manages your photos!

What are our short term goals when it comes to eliminating the necessity for managing files? Well first to make sure that Banshee and F-Spot properly take care of their respecitve libraries by default. When it comes to the short term we also will make sure that the file browser will be just that, not file management, but file browsing. Another thing we can do right now is to enable the Zeitgeist plugin by default in Docky, this gives users easy access to their files through the application that are organized by date, time and even category. Again let the application manage your files and leave you to enjoying the files whatever they may be.

Zeigeist manages the files for you!

Over the long term our goals are to use additional technologies that make file management irrelevant.  Of course all of this doesn’t mean that we will leave power users out in the cold. One of the things found in the current builds of elementary OS is that power user tools like gconf-editor and alacarte are hidden, that doesn’t mean that they can’t be accessed. We’ll probably not leave you with no way to manage files, but it won’t be something that will be entirely exposed to the default user. While our default behavior will branch off from the user managing files to using them we will still ship a file browser, you can use it all you want. And linux is still linux. You can remove Docky, change the theme, uninstall all the applications and make it just go to terminal if you want. We don’t want to restrict the freedom. We just want our users to not have to manage or browse for their files, which in itself is a freedom all it’s own.

Here’s a quick shot of the desktop:

Look at those icons!

And here’s a video of it being unboxed:

The good stuff starts about 6 minutes into the video. That’s some pretty exciting stuff. It just goes to show you that elementary really is something to be impressed with!

Icons are great!

The elementary project started with elementary icons on September 21, 2007. At the time, that was the entire scope of the project. The only other really great icon set out there for open desktops was Tango, and that just seemed not quite good enough. So, it started by trying to copy Mac OS’s icon set. And then it was redoing Mac OS’s icon set in the style of Crystal icons by Everaldo. And then it started to go a different direction. It was being being better than that. It was being better than Tango. And for a while, it was going pretty well. And then KDE4 came around the corner and brought with it the Appeal project. Then it all changed. Then elementary icons became the elementary project.

So now, what is the elementary project? It’s about bringing an amazing computing experience to everyone on the planet, for free. And, that’s something huge to say. What that means is building a desktop operating
system that not only tops other Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, but creating something that can compete with Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. And that means marketing this product, distributing the product, supporting the product, and doing it all for free. But, then there’s other implications to that statement as well. And, as the project grows, we’ll find out just how big it gets and how many people we can reach with such a limited budget.

Look at all that pretty!

Okay, so why should you care about the elementary project? Well, have you ever gotten a virus or not had the money to buy expensive software like Microsoft Office or been frustrated because your computer was going slow or even just wished it was a little nicer to look at? That’s why you should care. Because we’re fighting everyday frustrations that you have using your computer. We want to never get viruses either. We want the computer to start up in under 20 seconds. We want to not worry about managing our computer and just use it. And most of all, we really don’t want to have to pay for it. So, our interests are aligned. We’re not a company, we’re an organization. We care about building the best product and offering the best services out there to make things easy for you. We’re not blinded by profits, we’re not limited by shareholders or board members, we’re not afraid to take risks. And that means the absolute best computing experience for you and for us.