Tuesday 4 August 2015

Gnome-clocks Alarm Component redesign (GSoC '15)

    This post is about my work on alarm component of gnome-clocks as a part of GSoC '15. I'll start with the current design of the alarm component in gnome-clocks.

Below are the screenshots for the current design of alarm component in gnome-clocks.

Alarm tiles are shown in the window as shown above

To edit an alarm, click on the tile which'll open an edit dialog box

The new design for alarm component is shown in the mockups:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sils1297/gnome-mockups/master/clocks/alt/clocks-wireframes-2.png

Below is the screenshot of my work on alarm component so far.

New design - alarm component

    As shown in the above screenshot, there would be different tiles of alarms separated by a GtkSeparator in GtkBox.

    With this new design, a user would be able to switch on/off the alarm directly with one click while with the current design, a user has to open the edit dialog box and then turn on/off the alarm and then click on "Done" to save the changes. A user would be able to change the label of the alarm directly by clicking on the icon shown above the alarm name, which will open a popover where user can edit the alarm label. In addition to all of this, a user would be able to change the repetition days and alarm time by clicking on the tile and making changes in the edit dialog box and saving them.

    So far I'm able to add functionality of adding/removing alarm, editing an alarm and reflecting the new changes in the alarm tile. Right now I'm working on integrating features such as directly turning on/off the alarm using the active switch and changing the alarm label directly.

Saturday 13 June 2015

Gnome-clocks redesigning work

    I'm writing about the work that I've done so far. I worked on redesigning of "World" module of gnome-clocks. The current application shows the location in square tiles form. To delete any location user has to select the location and then click on the delete button. The below screenshots shows the current gnome-clocks "world" module design.


Locations shown as square tiles




Select locations and then click on delete to delete them





The new that I've implemented has a horizontally scrollable view of locations and there is a close icon which deletes the location. Screenshot is given below.


Close button deletes the location and new design

This implementation has still some bugs such as calculating the size of a tile on window resize and fitting the tiles perfectly in the window. Close button's event box is horizontally expanded so clicking at any place in close button row,  deletes location.

After this I was supposed to work on "New" button popover according to my proposed timeline but the implementation has some issues and other high priority work is there so I switched and started working on "Alarm" component of gnome-clocks. I'm currently working on it. 

The new design is really great but there are some features or design parts which are debatable for different options and different implementations and we're working on it.

Wednesday 27 May 2015

GSoC-2015 Introduction

Gnome-clocks redesign (GSoC'15)

    It seems a bit late for introduction so I'll mainly talk about what my project is about for google summer of code, 2015 and what I've done so far. Lasse Schuirmann is my mentor for this project who has been very supportive.

    To begin with the project details, this is the link to abstract of my project: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/details/google/gsoc2015/srp201201051/5738600293466112. I'm basically working on redesigning of gnome-clocks and adding some new features in gnome-clocks.

    In the redesigning, total three out of four components of gnome-clocks will be redesigned - world, alarm and timer.

Current design:

  • World and Alarm has tile view currently. 
  • While adding a new location in gnome-clocks, a dialog  is shown to select a location and add it to gnome-clocks.
  • There are no labels for alarms.
  • In timer component, only one timer is allowed so instead of that multiple timers feature is proposed.

This is the link to the mockups for the new design: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sils1297/gnome-mockups/master/clocks/alt/clocks-wireframes-2.png

    I've been working on changing the view of world clock and the patches for the same are submitted but still there are some problems so will be working on it and with that I'll be working on popover feature to add a new location. 

   The new proposed design is smooth and has better UI. Plus some cool features are also proposed so it'd be really helpful to users once the proposed project will be implemented properly.