Yepper, T4J...
(sry for the long-ish nature, but here `tis)
Yes, I tried the alpha1 - and indeed it was/is as fun as a puppy. Frisky was mentioned, I believe. A few bumps for sure, lol I lost the taskbar (no worries there, had a spare handy as also a few other files for quick copy/transplant justin case. Incredible, .jwmrc_tray and the bak were blank files when I finally opened `em - possibly a lesson there for those who understand how such a thing happens. The gui config for the toptray didn't work (was half expecting it to not since trying the original and the second effort - not terribly enthused with the creation of a whole new set of apps in /root/my-applications in that either and the alpha seems to not do that thankfully perhaps). Pfind wanted me to jump thru hoops in the alpha (entering a search term twice is just awkward, if a user needs advanced *then* the hoops - a n00B won't be so apt to use it if its not type-and-enter, just
do it and give me some paths to follow). Changing to my preferred iconset went without a hitch - since I only have a few on the desktop for droptargets it's not much effort to get the preferred ones I like after clearing the deck. Usually I scale the driveicons also (as a theme) and the orange mainmenu 24's stayed since only the driveicons were changed as such - so it's actually better for me to have them as separate in this case .. possibly an option for the next v to have user-chosen scalability (a choice of 48, 32, 24 16 gives versatility - 48's seem too big to me usually). One nice thing toptray and wbar do is scale to fit. A menu item for what's now popouts(?) on either side would be preferable imo - the toptray deal hangs `til I maus down towards either side or btm tray. If only jwm was to be used as wm, I could see the point - otherwise I'm more in favor of wbar since it works in almost all wms I use (lxde is an exception, perhaps) it works fine in icewm, openbox, blackbox and afterstep for sure as well as jwm. PG's failsafe for .2fs will be nice for those with frugals (raises hand sheepishly when the class is asked who's been nipped .. nasty, that). Not sure if the alpha saved properly (possibly I made some oddnesses all on my own, so no report on that). A 'regular' conky works well in Zigbert's widget thingie once it's modded a bit (and the conky/widget deal kinda-sorta worked almost as well as wbar across a variety of wms but I may have unstabilized it .. xerrslog reports the geometry settings lines as not a proper config or somesuch but they mostly work except in certain circumstances in AS - like if conky gets inadvertently killed the y geometry is topsy-turvy if conky -d is used to restart in-session but oki from a clean start).
Big thanks for the tcl and tk pets
(wasn't aware that they were lacking in the 4 series, was wondering why dependency checker said all's cool when some add-on pets were no-shows). The Opera 10a pet seems fine as far as I can tell, looking forward to a standard sm1114. A word or so about including some basic app documentation *locally* - was playing with p202-Opera (MeanPup, I think) and how refreshing .. aside from the quite decent ROX help, there's basically nada locally anymore for the n00B ("command-line what?") included on the basic iso. I've got a .zip for the Opera 9 series from
http://www.iMilly.com/files/op9hlp.zip 77kb (a TOC of local Help and pages is kind of a good idea before you even go online to help the user get comfy .. gee, I seem to recall there may have been a pretty good one in SeaMonkey at one time but times change :-\). And MTPaint's got a .zip Help for download. Nice to have local packages (like a book you don't need to go to the library for, eh?) Needn't be that big of a shelf, just .. like T4J mentioned, most new users got no idea of what the apps do beyond click and hunh .. I know I was guessing (wrong) a lot on MTPaint `til I got my zip.
Catching up with another 5 pp in this thread - mmhm, the 'shutdown' menu/sub has always been non-intuitive for me (I agree totally with making it Cancel, Lock, Reboot and Powerdown since those seem to be the major options). I started another menu/sub named Change.. for restarting X, various wms with varying results of success - AS has issues with PuppyPin, I think, but the silly driveicon deal (pup_event?) and general 'desktop' stuff gets lost without a pinboard as such - and dropping to prompt. Rox works great, but PuppyPin is one of those bumps that makes changing wms a pain sometimes (like how many ways to set the bg and which gets drawn?).
Which kind of leads into styles or themes - lol, pwidgets is better without the added complexity (imo) of theming. It's like the jwmtoptray, *only* useful in limited circumstances (please count this as a vote for wbar as being a more universal solution for a launcher at this point in time .. heck, xerrslog even points out easy hints if the icon-image or path is not right .. plus it's a godsend if the menu for the wm is strange - happened to me with the pets for openbox and xfce4). My two mainstays are wbar and conkywidget for jumping into wms (sure, you can run lots from cl but generally I like clear and present launcher and info .. sometimes even the best menu is too much digging or reading or which sub is the app I want in?).
Insert opinion here. Is it just me, or does a lot of visual confusion result from themes and app icons? MMhm, asked&answered in
P42 Desktop and Artwork, p18 - it'll happen for P5; Not to take away from some wonderful work on the new look,
but there seems to me to be some serious drawbacks. Like whether something is a generic 'default' or hmm - the TT-style icons are prime examples (Abiword is not Geany is not Leafpad is not a font selector, etc .. and no, for sure the tried and true larger ones may possibly not quite 'match' a theme-as-such but I'd prefer a little clash to ambiguous looks and yep, it's a lil' rough in the tiny sizes but at least xfce tries).
Ahh - now for the 2nd alfa
...:(not too lively:""" someday maybe I'll give firepup a go;
And some playing with a save2CD for alpha1 - arrgh, after a few days and too much pet consumption and the usual round of 4-5 (maybe 6 altogether if one counts openbox) wms and some sm skins and documentation and uh-oh all those nice ttf fonts finally 'broke' it (dread the inevitable "RAM full" on CDs, but what can I say .. it had to be done and I actually observed a few minor things which I may recall once I'm over the trauma;) .. so, while I'm dl'ing DTa3 .. YES, I know troubleshooting printing is of vital importance but I would dearly love to see some puplets released with no printing support at all (is there anyone else who feels likewise?) since I gave up on home printing years ago (paper's cheap, ink is dear). Screenies? sure, since this may be one of the last posts in the alpha1 thread.. links to the fullsize (182-449kb)
http://img19.picoodle.com/img/img19/3/2/5/f_sm1114nmnm_1456672.png
http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/3/2/5/f_P42axfcem_eccb469.png
http://img02.picoodle.com/img/img02/3/2/5/f_ozricjwmm_c7ac1c6.png
heck, I'll even embed the small ones