ScreenSaver

Revision 2 as of 2005-09-17 03:09:09

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Summary

Rationale

Late in the Breezy cycle, gnome-screensaver replaced xscreensaver so that Ubuntu could have a decent-quality screensaver interface. But it needs polishing to bring it up to the Ubuntu standard of excellence.

Use cases

Scope

Design

The unlock dialog

The original from gnome-screensaver:BR attachment:upstream-unlock.jpg

Improvements for Breezy, in order of importance:

  1. Nuke the fuel gauge.
  2. Put the account name, centered, in large type at the top. (Relying on the real name is a bad idea, because you may have multiple accounts with the same real name.)
  3. Nuke the "Name:" label. Instead, put the real name in small print underneath the account name.

  4. Nuke the "Welcome to computer name".

  5. Nuke the lock icon. Instead, the icon of the current person should appear centered above their account name. (If the person does not have an icon, the Ubuntu icon -- no "ubuntu", just the icon -- should be used instead.)
  6. Nuke the icons in the buttons. They're clutter.
  7. Change "Switch User" to "Someone Else...", with a capital E and an ellipsis. (It makes sense when alongside Cancel and Unlock.)
  8. The "Cancel" and "Unlock" buttons should be the same width as each other, but not the same width as the "Someone Else..." button.
  9. Make the gap between "Someone Else..." and "Cancel" at least 12 pixels, while the gap between "Cancel" and "Unlock" is 6 pixels.
  10. Nuke the access keys for "Password", "Cancel" and "Unlock". "Password" doesn't need one because you're there by default, "Cancel" is triggered with the Escape key, and "Unlock" with the Enter key.
  11. Change "Enter a password to unlock the screen" to "You must enter your password to unlock the screen.", and make it centered.
  12. Make the password field and its label a centered group (so that the gap between the left edge of the window and the "P" is the same as the gap between the right edge of the window and the right edge of the password field).

Post-Breezy:

  1. Synchronize the design with that of the gdm login screen.
  2. When the screensaver activates (either automatically, or with the "Lock Screen" command), the screen should first take one 1000 ms to fade to black.

  3. The keyboard should behave like it does in xscreensaver, where the first character you type is treated as the first character of your password.

  4. 2000 ms before the timeout expires for entering your password, the dialog should start fading to black. If you start typing during those two seconds, the dialog should fade up to to full brightness in 500 ms.

Implementation

Code

Tweaks to gnome-screensaver.

Data preservation and migration

When first running gnome-screensaver, get the choice of screensaver and time from xscreensaver.

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion