Wrapping up GSoC 2017

So, GSoC ends in a short while and I want to take advantage of that and show a preview of both features that we’ve worked on :).

As I have described here and here, I worked on the gnome-shell search results and made them look different and then I added system actions to the mix. Without further ado, let’s see how they turned out.

First up, the updated gnome-shell results. The idea was that we needed to fit as many results as possible on the screen, making it possible for lower resolutions to handle fitting those results on the screen. At the same time, we had to make sure that the screen won’t be cluttered, or it would’ve turned into a mess.

A peek at how it used to look:

I have to say that even if I like the new design more than the old one, the old one didn’t look bad either. It’s just that it was a lot of unused space that would’ve been useful. So here we have the new one:

This is how the gnome-shell overview looks now. Pretty cool, eh? 🙂

As you can see, the separators between each app and its associated results are now more visible, so you can clearly see the ‘area’ that each app occupies. We are still thinking about some tweaks about the way it looks. Mainly having the content structured as columns (of course, no vertical lines will be drawn). As you can see, app icons (the ones on the left) are aligned, they appear as if they are on the same vertical line. Something similar happens with the smaller icons in the middle, as well. The question is whether we should also align the titles (‘Color’, ‘Online Accounts’, etc. from the picture).

Next up are the system actions, all 6 of them so far. Those are: power off, suspend, lock screen, switch user, log out and lock orientation. Yep, you will be able to press the super key, type ‘power off’, press Enter, press Tab 4 times, press Enter again and voila! You have shut down your OS (bonus: if you press Tab only 3 times, then Enter, you restart your OS. MAGIC!).

Regarding the system actions we are still thinking of some adjustments, like the aspect of the black pill behind each picture, but we aren’t sure right now. I really hope you guys will use the new system actions :D. Who knows, maybe there are more to be added in the future (we coded them in a generic fashion, so adding a new one would be quite easy).

The next target is having a help overlay for gnome-shell so that shortcuts and gestures are easily accessible.

So this was my GSoC 2017 work, I hope you like the outcome and I really hope that what we’ve done is useful to the gnome-shell users :)!

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