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Hello guys,
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I haven't been posting anything here for a while, basically because everything just worked as it should. But I've been watching AWN's development from my corner all the time, though due to my non-existent programming skills this watching was just using the newest bzr and looking at the progress you guys made. 
But I have made some observations of minor non-critical things that need to be finally fixed someday and I want to come up with them now. I'm sure that you are aware of nearly everything of what I want to tell you but as I said, I've been watching AWN's development for a long time and those small thing were there all the time and they are still there... And I think those are the things that prevent AWN from being perfect. :)
So I just start to list what on those small things I've discovered so far.
But I have made some observations of minor non-critical things that need to be finally fixed someday and I want to come up with them now. I'm sure that you are aware of nearly everything of what I want to tell you but as I said, I've been watching AWN's development for a long time and those small thing were there all the time and they are still there... And I think those are the things that prevent AWN from being perfect. :)So I just start to list what on those small things I've discovered so far.
1. The translations.
I'm using the German locale so I can't say anything about the other ones but there is the following situation with this locale: Already for months there are some few untranslated strings that appear in English like "Dock Preferences" or "Change Icon". As I can see the German translation on Launchpad is complete. But I don't find "Dock Preferences" there so it seems not to be in the po template though it appeared in the GUI a long time ago. I could find "Change Icon" and it is already translated on Launchpad, but the translation still hasn't appeared in AWN itself. Also there are some 8 strings that need review (and in 7 of 8 cases the new suggestions are really better than the current translation) and are pending for a long time now. Unfortunately I'm not a member of the AWN localization team (if something like this exists, however I can't edit the translations, just make new suggestions), so I can't fix it myself...
Well, what I want to say is just that the communication between the devs and the translators should be improved, so that new translations/suggestions get into AWN quicker.
I'm using the German locale so I can't say anything about the other ones but there is the following situation with this locale: Already for months there are some few untranslated strings that appear in English like "Dock Preferences" or "Change Icon". As I can see the German translation on Launchpad is complete. But I don't find "Dock Preferences" there so it seems not to be in the po template though it appeared in the GUI a long time ago. I could find "Change Icon" and it is already translated on Launchpad, but the translation still hasn't appeared in AWN itself. Also there are some 8 strings that need review (and in 7 of 8 cases the new suggestions are really better than the current translation) and are pending for a long time now. Unfortunately I'm not a member of the AWN localization team (if something like this exists, however I can't edit the translations, just make new suggestions), so I can't fix it myself...
Well, what I want to say is just that the communication between the devs and the translators should be improved, so that new translations/suggestions get into AWN quicker.
2. The unofficial config keys.
I came across the pinned thread about those config keys recently. I have to say, it's a really different experience to run AWN with 35FPS instead of 25. :D I don't want to ask you to change the default value to 35 since I understand that there could be difficulties with older hardware that can't display those 35FPS fluently. But I think that those config keys should get into the AWN-Manager as soon as possible. I know that they are likely to be changed in near future and therefore it might turn out to be useless work to implement them into AWN-Manager now. But the thread about them is already two months old and the keys are still there. I think it's a shame that only people browsing across this thread can use those useful features. And I think it's less work to adjust the AWN-Manager if those keys get changed than to implement those keys from zero, so it's not completely useless to implement them already now. :)
I came across the pinned thread about those config keys recently. I have to say, it's a really different experience to run AWN with 35FPS instead of 25. :D I don't want to ask you to change the default value to 35 since I understand that there could be difficulties with older hardware that can't display those 35FPS fluently. But I think that those config keys should get into the AWN-Manager as soon as possible. I know that they are likely to be changed in near future and therefore it might turn out to be useless work to implement them into AWN-Manager now. But the thread about them is already two months old and the keys are still there. I think it's a shame that only people browsing across this thread can use those useful features. And I think it's less work to adjust the AWN-Manager if those keys get changed than to implement those keys from zero, so it's not completely useless to implement them already now. :)
3. The start and the end.
After AWN has started it looks amazing but the start itself is quite ugly. First of all, as you surely know a white square appears in the upper left corner of the screen. I'm aware of the fact that it isn't easy to fix and a fix is planned for later versions. But maybe it's possible to reduce the size of the square until it is finally fixed? I don't know whether it depends on the bar height or something else and thus isn't changeable... Or maybe it is possible to prevent AWN from painting anything on the screen until it is fully loaded? There is also this Emerald window border that appears around AWN for a moment, maybe one could solve this problem like this, too.
The shutdown is a bit ugly, too since the applets (at least those applets that I use :) ) show ugly white squares for a small moment before the final shutdown. Isn't is possible to let them disappear with an animation like the animation during the start? I know that it would take some seconds and many users want AWN to disappear quickly after they end it, but there might be an option for this in the AWN-Manager like "Smooth shutdown".
After AWN has started it looks amazing but the start itself is quite ugly. First of all, as you surely know a white square appears in the upper left corner of the screen. I'm aware of the fact that it isn't easy to fix and a fix is planned for later versions. But maybe it's possible to reduce the size of the square until it is finally fixed? I don't know whether it depends on the bar height or something else and thus isn't changeable... Or maybe it is possible to prevent AWN from painting anything on the screen until it is fully loaded? There is also this Emerald window border that appears around AWN for a moment, maybe one could solve this problem like this, too.
The shutdown is a bit ugly, too since the applets (at least those applets that I use :) ) show ugly white squares for a small moment before the final shutdown. Isn't is possible to let them disappear with an animation like the animation during the start? I know that it would take some seconds and many users want AWN to disappear quickly after they end it, but there might be an option for this in the AWN-Manager like "Smooth shutdown".
4. The popup dialogues.
The background and font colours sometimes don't fit to each other so it might look like this:
The background and font colours sometimes don't fit to each other so it might look like this:
I don't know whether there are some keys for those colours in the GConf. But, however, it's not really comfortable for the user to search for such basic options in the GConf. I think those are options that must be put in the AWN-Manager sooner or later.
Also the small arrow at the bottom of each dialogue should be over the mathing icon/applet, not always in the middle of the dialogue. But I don't know whether it is difficult to make.
Also the small arrow at the bottom of each dialogue should be over the mathing icon/applet, not always in the middle of the dialogue. But I don't know whether it is difficult to make.
5. The Autohide option.
I'm using the autohide feature all the time and though it is often said that it's buggy and unusable and will be corrected in later versions I think it is solved much better than in KibaDock or CairoDock. The only thing that could be improved is the missing animation for hiding and unhiding. I think it is a thing that could be managed by Compiz Fusion quite comfortable. AWN should just send a signal for closing when it hides and Compiz would think that it must make the closing animation. :D Same thing with unhiding/opening animation. Maybe it's a dumb idea but as I can see Compiz makes its animation in AWN when really opening or closing it so why shouldn't it work for hiding/unhiding? :) Of course such a thing should be optional.
I'm using the autohide feature all the time and though it is often said that it's buggy and unusable and will be corrected in later versions I think it is solved much better than in KibaDock or CairoDock. The only thing that could be improved is the missing animation for hiding and unhiding. I think it is a thing that could be managed by Compiz Fusion quite comfortable. AWN should just send a signal for closing when it hides and Compiz would think that it must make the closing animation. :D Same thing with unhiding/opening animation. Maybe it's a dumb idea but as I can see Compiz makes its animation in AWN when really opening or closing it so why shouldn't it work for hiding/unhiding? :) Of course such a thing should be optional.
6. The applet icons.
Several applets don't have an icon in the AWN-Manager. I don't know whether there is something wrong with my installation so it doesn't find the icons or there are really still no icons for some applets. I even think it's my installation's fault since such applets as the aRSS applet have no icon whereas I remember quite well that it had an icon sometime...
7. The Affinity applet.
Well, two things: Firstly, there is no preferences dialogue any more (I think, there was one sometime... Haven't used affinity for quite a long time and rediscovered it recently). Secondly, the applet icon isn't matching the GTK Icon-Theme, though all the icons in Affinity itself do match it very nicely.
Well, two things: Firstly, there is no preferences dialogue any more (I think, there was one sometime... Haven't used affinity for quite a long time and rediscovered it recently). Secondly, the applet icon isn't matching the GTK Icon-Theme, though all the icons in Affinity itself do match it very nicely.
Well, I think that's it. :) Everything else is quite perfect as far as I can say. Please don't be angry with me for all the accumulated negative things, I just want to help you to make AWN better and since I've no idea of programming I try to help you like this...
*Edited at 4:13am, 08/25/08
