Phoenix CE - "Start" Menu Design and Layout

[ecomoney]

Hi all, theres been a lot of talk about how the base for the Phoenix CE could do with some tweaking of the menus for "ultra-useability" and productivity.

Puppy's way of catorgorising the programs on its menu is great (xdg?). On the few occaisions I have used windows I wince when I see the "my programs menu" and having to find a specific program in sometimes a screenful of entries is a chore. Something I do find useful (and I think a lot of new linux users would too) is a specific "Control Panel", containing everything to do with configuration. Im aware that this is a windows term (they will probably try and patent it soon!), but if its what the user knows and expects, whats in a name?

Richard.a has done some excellent work, with very thorough documentation. I particularly like the bookmarks feature from the main menu, which opens the browser and sends the user directly to the webpage. New bookmarks are added automatically when they bookmark a page from within Seamonkey. Also the "documents" entry that brings up the documents folders would add a lot to puppies end-user productivity. Perhaps this could be combined with the "My windows Documents" folder feature planned for Phoenix? A "recent documents" menu would also boost puppies productivity, but Im not sure how this would be implemented technically.

Perhaps the aim of this thread should be to produce a final working menu file for Phoenix CE. Any suggestions contributions welcome.

[jonyo]

Richard.a has done some excellent work, with very thorough documentation.

He certainly has!

[Ray MK]

Hi guys - Ray here

did Richard ever make an iso of the work he did to 210pro available?

if he did, would love to download and play - it looks fantasic and I would also have an opportunity to learn more about earlier Puppy's and the excellent work thats been done to them.

Already have 109ce, 215ce and Ecopup - 210pro with Richards mods would make a third masterpiece, filling the gap between the other two v nicely.

With what looks like a fourth in the making - cant wait to see Pheonix when its all done and finalised.

Dont know - being a Puppy newbie an' all -
if I can be much help with Pheonix - but if testing on an older laptop, which is a 4/5yr old Patriot with 800mhz celeron processor and 128mb ram,
or a 6/7yr old Patriot Pc with a 400mhz celeron and 98mb ram,
or a similar vintage P11 255mhz Pc with 64mb ram,
doing full and frugal's install's, maybe testing some older printers also, or just looking for any gremlins - documentation etc
anything that may be of use - would be happy to oblige.

Best regards - Ray MK

[alienjeff]

Just my 2-cents: I personally find anything more than a two tier menu to be a PITA. It's about the only thing I dislike about v1.09CE.

[ecomoney]

Welcome Ray, you have some very valuable qualifications that will come in very useful for Phoenix's development . Were currently working out the base from the standard 2.14r version. You can download the latest version here. Please let us know your ideas and opinions.

@AJ Yes, more than a 2 tier for accessing Apps would be overkill and make it less productive. I think it might also break the XDG menu system that has been divised. I do think though that the plethora of settings and config option could be done with being broken down into further sections though to make them more understandable.

[richard.a]

First of all, thank-you Robert for your invitation to join you.

Secondly thank-you to the rest of you also for your enthusiasm about the laborious plodding type work I've done with those menus, starting with the original one a year or maybe more ago when I showed how the actual Windows2000 (which I think is probably the most productive menu system ever designed by anyone) could be replicated even in early-ish JWM.

No, I didn't ever create an ISO for 2.10pro(v2), nor indeed the 2.12r2(d2), nor other stuff, for one important reason. I discussed this with several folk (SitHeelSpeak was one) on a thread particularly about broken ISO remaster scripts. When I get "a round tuit" I'll revisit that, because being able to build an ISO others can try is fairly important. Sure I've created all sorts of tar.gz files, but that's time consuming I think, and honestly which installation on which pup_save.2fs (or .3fs on earlier ones) on which computer does what is hard to remember.

The idea of a Control Panel is very good, and that was my inspiration jointly with the shutdown buttonbar to look at floating command button bars you can position anywhere on the screen. The syntax works well up to before ver 3.0 so I suspect there is maybe a dependency issue from 3.0 onwards. I haven't pursued that to date.

Added
That shutdown bar is similar in looks to the one Nathan uses in Grafpup2, but wasn't actually copied from him, it was scripted afresh (I had forgotten he had created one, actually), and I discovered the commands syntax need changing if used in ver 1 puppies. That could mean it won't work is 3.02 or 4 either as it stands.

Maybe a Control Panel that looks more like the JWM configuration panel could be better. And I would think another one for collecting all the Wizards into a single spot too. There are many things we can do, and I am uncertain how many would work properly with writing just an xdg menu. Saying that, I have no problems with any of that buttonbar scripting working with 2.15ce and EZpups which I've tried up to 2.17 (I think).Of course they use ice-wm as default window managers.

So far all my work has been done using JWM on systems no more recent than 2.11 because of problems associated with later versions (running the kernels in 2.12 onwards) with a raft of literally freely available old boxes being landfill material here in South Australia. Typically some IBM Aptivas, HP Pavilions and a number of similar vintage boxes possibly also manufactured by Lenovo in Taiwan, mostly using Intel810 and SIS chipsets.

While not having done more than just look at at the XDG menu system, it seems pretty obvious how the syntax "should" work (we all know the difference between "should" and actual practice, don't we ) but I have a question for you folks right at this point, because I spent hours attempting to integrate the JWM menu systems properly with 2.15ce and perhaps that work held its release back, I'm not sure. Warren was *very* patient with me

Question is, is there *really* actually a need for more than one menu system? If we are looking at users who are are comfortable with ubuntu, honestly I think stay with JWM. If we want to emulate, copy, or what-have-you Microsoft, sure, let's use ice-wm. I'm not being a party-pooper, But to get two systems to work properly takes time - ask Gliesl with her magnificent XPuppyPro in 2006.

I've used 215ce wallpapers with 2.02r2 and also with 2.10pro, - both with and without my modifications, and they both look good. It depends what your brief is. I've also never used 2.15ce with JWM since developing the more successful implementation of the two menus, so this is a valid question to ask "do we need more than one?"

One of the options I've added to this menuing I've been playing with is the ability to access the on-line Office applications on the Ajax13 website. This may save the need for considering any heavy-weight office applications at all - provided the user has a high speed internet connection.

I've probably been too verbose in my answer. I should also go and see what other threads you chaps have been writing on

Added
I must see if I can find where the 2.14 retro ISO is. This brings me to a sore point among some correspondents to these forums, The lack of what seems a co-ordinated approach to downloads over the entire swag of PuppyLinux sites. Nowhere in all of these threads has there been more than just a reference to 2.14r and how much better it is. A link would have been handy to a download site, for people new to this set of threads - which I am, of course!

Anyway, thank-you again for inviting me.

Richard in Adelaide
ably assisted on the keyboard by Mr. Maximus Pussimus and Miss MinimusPussimus

[richard.a]

Hi Ray

did Richard ever make an iso of the work he did to 210pro available?

if he did, would love to download and play - it looks fantasic and I would also have an opportunity to learn more about earlier Puppy's and the excellent work thats been done to them.

Answered in the post above this one

Already have 109ce, 215ce and Ecopup - 210pro with Richards mods would make a third masterpiece, filling the gap between the other two v nicely.

Agreed, but most of the hard work was already done by someone more gifted than me

...but if testing on an older laptop, which is a 4/5yr old Patriot with 800mhz celeron processor and 128mb ram,
or a 6/7yr old Patriot Pc with a 400mhz celeron and 98mb ram,
or a similar vintage P11 255mhz Pc with 64mb ram,
doing full and frugal's install's, maybe testing some older printers also, or just looking for any gremlins - documentation etc
anything that may be of use - would be happy to oblige.

Yeah I've run puppy 2.02 succesfully on a Pentium 100/64Mb EDO RAM and 135Mb of pup_save and I think 100Mb of swap.

800MHz Celeron/128 should romp home with absolutely no probs as long as you don't have chipset hangups on later kernels.

There is a thread on this site where I've got caps of an 800x600 desktop running 2.15ce on a Twinhead Laptop, P266MMX 64Mb EDO RAM and 200Mb of swap and 128Mb of pup_save. I've resized all the 2.15ce transparent icons down to (I think) 32x32 size and it looks and works nicely, but it does really need more than 64Mb for Ice-wm.

When I get another "round tuit" I'll post those resized icons for folks who would like smaller ones. I think I eventually did the complete range of icons for 2.15; I left the menu icons at 24px

[Ray MK]

Been playing with PH214rm1 and 1st impressions are v good

Like skipstone & seamonkey but if opera is faster as a main
browser - that would be good.

Luv having access to hdd's on desktop - super

Like txt edit on desktop - good for quicknotes etc - Geany is good
and has nice features

Like default image viewer - fast - and if U want to edit image - easy
to drag file to paint from rox

Is it easy to change rox image default to preview - if desired - as in
215ce etc. Better still - give user an option button if load speed of
larger folders/files presents a potential issue

Luv pwget and psi on desktop - superb

Menu as is - fairly intuitive - as are existing icons - easy
for children, the elderly user, the visually impaired, Pc newbie's,
and even 1st time Linux/Pc users

Obviously a more sophisicated 215ce style desktop & menu as an easy
change option is essential to attract the more seasoned user

Conky ON / conky OFF = as in LightHouse would be superb and a battery
icon or similar for laptop user's would be a winner

conky can show battery usage - but I cant find out how to make it work
as can icedock - but that defeated me too

moved a few icons around and please forgive my shoddy txt ( if I can
attatch .png ) for u all 2c

Off to play printing and full hdd install on other PC now - this is a
frugal install on the laptop

C u all soon - Best regards - Ray MK

[Pizzasgood]

conky can show battery usage - but I cant find out how to make it work

I haven't tried Phoenix, but I've been using Conky for a while. You need to modprobe battery before it can read them, then you need to modify the Conky configuration file /root/.conkyrc to add battery support (if Phoenix doesn't already have it).

Code: Select all

Battery: ${color }${battery_time BAT0} - ${battery BAT0} ${color #cc2222}${battery_bar 6 BAT0}

That assumes your battery is BAT0. This is the code I used in pcPuppyOS in an attempt to autodetect any batteries from 0-3 and only show a line if they exist:

Code: Select all

${if_existing /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state capacity}${color }Battery: ${color }${battery_time BAT0} - ${battery BAT0} ${color #cc2222}${battery_bar 6 BAT0}
$endif${if_existing /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state capacity}${color }Battery: ${color }${battery_time BAT1} - ${battery BAT1} ${color #cc2222}${battery_bar 6 BAT1}
$endif${if_existing /proc/acpi/battery/BAT2/state capacity}${color }Battery: ${color }${battery_time BAT2} - ${battery BAT2} ${color #cc2222}${battery_bar 6 BAT2}
$endif${if_existing /proc/acpi/battery/BAT3/state capacity}${color }Battery: ${color }${battery_time BAT3} - ${battery BAT3} ${color #cc2222}${battery_bar 6 BAT3}
$endif${color }$stippled_hr

A similar technique could be used to "autodetect" other thigns too, although it should be kept in mind that although stuff between "if"s might not be visible, it will still sometimes output errors as if you were running it anyways. I haven't noticed that with batteries, but I did with showing free space for places that don't exist (such as /mnt/home on a full-hd install).

More info:
http://conky.sourceforge.net/variables.html
http://conky.sourceforge.net/config_settings.html

[Ray MK]

Hi Pizzasgood - Ray here

Just seen your post - thanks for words of wisdom - will try and let you know how it all goes.

Thought I'd downloaded conky via PSI in Pheonix - PSI said its installed - restarted X etc,
but no evidence of conky anywhere on Pc. / root / downloads / apps /user / local / etc / share / menu / anywhere else I should look?

Maybe I can download from conky site and try with that - see how it goes.

Meanwhile - back to the older PC and full Hdd install - just to see if all ok in 96mb
ram + 400 mhz celeron and 64mb ram + 255mhz P11.

Should be fine - 'cos 215ce, 216de, 3.01, 2.15.1, 2.17.1, LH215ce and 109ce are all on the Hdd's now - and there's a partition waiting for pheonix.

Fun fun - c u all soon - Ray MK

[alienjeff]

[tronkel]

Ray MK wrote:

but no evidence of conky anywhere on Pc.

You should check to see if there are lines in your /root/.xinitrc file that start the conky daemon.

qiv -z /root/Choices/ROX-background.jpg &
conky -d &

If this is missing, open your .xinitrc as text and insert the above lines near the bottom of the file immediately before the line that starts the current wm.

I'll look into making a lassie sfs module for the Opera browser, that you can use with Puppy 320Alpha barebones (a.k.a. Chihuahua)

[Ray MK]

Hi - alienjeff - brilliant pic -

you will laugh at this - I did manage to scramble LightHouse by installing
pheonix on hda6, which is where LH was, and not hda5 which was empty as intended.

So Gparted and started again - pheonix full hdd installation to hda5 - no probs - but then LH215 iso simply refused to boot from cd - much muttering & festering later - still not re-installed. So

Tomorrow is another day - till then

Best Regards - Ray MK

[Ray MK]

Tronkel

thanks for suggestion - sadly didn't work - but its probably me not doing
other things correctly - still v new and learning - looked at the sample conf files & docs etc that explain conky - but most of it is over my head.

however - now know where xinitrc is and saw the daemon call for hotswap (nothing for conky) inserted the lines you suggested just b4 lines that call jwm - restarted X - no go - rebooted - still no go with conky

Was thinking aboat copying conky conf files from 216ce - but didn't 'cos not sure if I'd break something - different WM's etc.

Have 216ce on hdd - just wanted to learn how to get conky going in pheonix/214R as frugal - thought it would be a simple install using PSI - so back to start and try again - b4 I grab the Brandy bottle.

Meanwhile - best regards - Ray MK

[tronkel]

Ray MK wrote:

Was thinking aboat copying conky conf files from 216ce - but didn't 'cos not sure if I'd break something - different WM's etc.

I don't think you'd do much damage by going to 2.16CE, opening /root/.xinitrc and look for these lines there near the bottom. Also while you're in /root take copies of .conky_ip and .conkyrc. As in intermediate step, save them to /mnt/home.

Then restart Phoenix 2.14R and copy these files from /mnt/home to your /root
Then open Phoenix's /root/.xinitrc and copy the conky daemon stuff to the similar place in in Phoenix's /root/.xinitrc

Make sure that qiv is in fact available in Phoenix. You can check this by typing qiv in a terminal. Let me know how u get on.

Hope this helps.

Tronkel

[ecomoney]

Many thanks for your ideas.

Battery support/conky How much extra space will conky take up. If its just a few k then that would be fine. how much resource would the "modprobe battery" take up? Older laptops in my experience are quite rare, but they certainly should be catered for. Is it best to have this support built in or to be added as a pack from psi? Depends on the size/resources required. Would like to see some screenshots for conky, if its not to big perhaps it can be included. One for the space left in pup_save.2fs on a frugal install would be especially useful.

browserAs regards Opera, I think it is a fantastic browser. The interface and controls are far better than seamonkey or Skipstone. It has one major drawback, and that is that is is closed source. While Im not against propriety apps for specialist work (open source is better) for an app as important as a browser I think its much better (read Ethical) that it's inner workings are transparent. Call me paranoid, but its the times were living in. Skipstone also has the advantage of re-using the code from seamonkey to render pages, without having to load the additional components that Seamonkey requires. This makes the whole distro smaller. The opening speed of skipstone is fantastic and Im not even sure that opera could keep up with that (though it generally beats seamonkey hands down. The browser was the only app that was letting the general speed speed down and Im glad that its been sorted ut with a fast useable browse.

Control Panel The current menu's are arranged really illogically. Under the utility menu there are also control panel options such as "resize storage file", as well as the find file functions (a catagory of its own in the 2.10r menus.)

@ Richard
Hello Richard and welcome to the project. Its really good of you to help us out, even though the kernel that we are using will not help you with your vintage of computers. Puppy's kernel has already (IMHO) become too new to adequately support a wide range of the older machines that it is designed for.

I like the idea of the links to the online office suite, and particularly your links to the seamonkey favourites straight from the bar. I was wondering if you would put us together some newb-friendly menus (a .jwmrc file?) specifically for Phoenix, based on your work with 2.10r. Currently the latest "Build" of Phoenix is here

http://www.puppylinux.ca/ttuuxxx/ecopup ... master.iso
MD5 2C1BE43FB904D3E61FF1EE4CF8A98DF2

Currently its a basic 2.14r 1.01 with added apps. Once the base if relatively complete we will be adding the various utilities.

Many thanks for adding your expertise Richard

[Ray MK]

hi all - Ray MK

still no go with conky on pheonix214rm1 - tried everything Tronkel suggested and reinstalled conky using PSI, eventually got a menu entry after installing conky1.4.9_pet - but message said dependancy Libs missing and not know where to find.

qiv is setup as default image viewer and works v well - so not sure what else to do.

did copy files etc from 216ce - still no go

not a major prob as I have conky on 216ce, FHjwm201c, LH215c and its fine - just wanted to see it on 214rm1 - and as a newbie, how easy it is to install a small utility item.

well I have my answer - no so easy 4 newbie's - will have to rely on all you more capable Puppy masters to do your magic - but it was fun trying and I learnt a few things
that I previously was unaware of and didn't understand.

Full hdd install on 96mb ram 400mhz celeron mini pc box went fine - and ph214rm1 runs v well indeed.

Both browsers run v well and like qiv as default image viewer - need to find out how activate image preview in rox.

Not giving up on conky but must have strained the poor brain bud a tad 'cos - got headache now.

meanwhile - best regards - Ray MK

[richard.a]

Hi Robert,

For reasons best known to itself, the forum software didn't tell me that you'd answered my previous post; I apologise for not responding for that reason. I am sorry.


Now, just a note in passing, about 2.14R "Revisited or Remastered" and I rather like it at first go.

I also tried both the ver 1 and the ver2 EZ-Pup icewm scripts and there is a problem there, the menu just doesn't work (there are only just the bottom two lines), but you can Ctrl-Alt-Bkspace to get back to the prompt if you need, and restart xwin jwm to get a working system. Then xwin icewm to get back to ice-wm.

There doesn't appear to be an XDG menu structure in it, but I may have looked in the wrong place. The icewm menus in the /root/.icewm directory are blank place holding files.

So, again, it's really "Do we need two totally different menu systems in the one operating system?"

I've transferred a working menu (several files, in fact, from 2.15ce and 2.16 into the /root/.icewm directory, and after seeing that they work, I have edited the icewm order of menu lines to put them in the same relative positions as the jwm has them. Looks better.

The mu-rox-traybuttons alterations to line 51 (from memory) in the startup file in that same directory, which puts those traybuttons back on EZ-Pup on 2.15, 2.16 and 2.17 doesn't work on this one. Pity as I think they are useful once you get used to using them (as in Windows 98/Me/2000). I even tried copying the working file from a 2.15ce /root/.icewm and it still didn't show the icons. So there

I'm now toying with the idea of building an icewm menu in 2.16 (should work in 2.14r just as well) that more closely follows my previous work - because of its ergonomics and familiarity for new users fresh from Windows. I still maintain the MS Windows is one of the best - providing you use the w98/Me/2000 variety and no later.

Is this what you would like me to do for this project?


Some local news:
My 4 seat "internet cafe" for an an old folks home I'm planning and assembling stuff for, will need to use either 2.14EZ modified as above, or 2.16EZ similarly modified, as I have an early Twinhead laptop that the ALSA fails to work on 2.15ce.

I have also found a large supply of far more of those transparent icons and I'm working towards 24pixel versions of them and the opaque ones that the EZ-Pup icewm upgrade uses, because the majority of older laptops don't support anything higher-res than 800x600.

Take care folks,

Richard in Adelaide.

[ecomoney]

good luck with the cybercafe stuff richard, if I can offer any experience just let me know. I was hoping you would convert some of your 2.10 revised jwm menu code for use in phoenix, changed to accomodate the new apps.

[richard.a]

Thanks for answering. Please would you check your PM box for a PM I sent there some days ago?

good luck with the cybercafe stuff richard, if I can offer any experience just let me know.

I appreciate that, and may need to come back to you on that. A different sort of clientelle than yours, but hey! it's a similar concept.

I was hoping you would convert some of your 2.10 revised jwm menu code for use in phoenix, changed to accommodate the new apps.

Only too pleased to do that.

Was hoping to find out exactly what else you wanted in the menu, and as you've nominated jwm and v2.10, that's fine. That's where the previous work was done. I'll need to know about the extra apps you've added.

The menu on its own will probably be short of some of the icons, and maybe one or two app start links will be broken too, so I need an ISO (or even a pup_save file plus whatever sfs's you are using) to check what needs adding and what needs altering. Or should I use the "vanilla" 2.14r ISO you linked to in your earlier post?

Would you like the floating command bars too? They are easily removed if not. They are actually currently a separate zip file, part of the overall package.

As is the option to create a 215ce look and the EZ-pup look as an alternative to the native with just the altered menu structure.


FYI There are 3 variants, all similar in both look and function, based on what the file manifest of three different versions comprises. 210 was the original and imho the best, but you may like to change some of the paler icons.

Version 202R2 - a retro of 2.02 like the 2.14 - is another variant.

I've also done one for Version 1.09 which although designed for starting from a win98 desktop, will run very nicely from the GRUB start menu and I was thinking of posting how to do that.


Edits (3)
You can download the ver 2.10pro-2 .jwmrc menu file here and the .jwmrc-tray one here

Rename the existing pair to (perhaps) My.jwmrc and My.jwmrc-tray or something similar. Then rename the downloaded files DOT with a . and keep a backup.

The index.html file in the directory one level up is some info about it.

However the menu syntax is different and doesn't work properly with this version of JWM (which looks much nicer unless it's just the theming). I've started working on the differences, and will initially change just the JWM menu native code if it will allow me.

It didn't.

Later I thought I might look at the XDG stuff which I've now located. Maybe a few days should see a downloadable one. Maybe not.

I've spent several hours this evening trying this and that; I'm having difficulties in finding editable files for the "start" menu, as the MO has changed significantly since the JWM menus I did for 2.15ce.

The tray file is still easily edited, and appears that it will work like the 2.10pro2 version, but there is little value in doing that one on its own.

Richard