Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

B.t.w. there is already Xulrunner for the tablets. With that you make a mash-up with some javascript and xml knowledge. Hopefully it can be sped up to acceptable levels.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

There was chuckling. But I have a Jack Russell; she doesn't go: "Lulz. Want cheezburgah.", she goes: "I say, that was rather amuzing, wasn't it. When's dinner?"

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

You know, I bought my 770 in Dec. 2005, without ever seeing one in the wild, because I had been reading about it for months, and it had been exactly what I had been looking for for years. I had been planning about getting an N900, assuming it has GPS and WiMAX, right away as well. But with all I read about the UI having bigger icons, bigger scrollbars, etc., totally nullifying the advantage of the high-resolution screen, I am going to hold off until I can play with it at Best Buy or somewhere to see if it still meets my needs. I've stuck with the 770 for three years now, and there is no reason I can't continue to stick with it until some other manufacture comes up with a device that meets my needs. There is nothing wrong with adding a finger-friendly mode, but it is nonsense to eliminate the stylus-friendly, highres-utilizing mode.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I think part of the problem is thinking that something *new* needs to be developed (e.g. hildon-desktop). The thing is fvwm can duplicate the entire home page easily, except for the desktop applets. fvwm has a task bar, menus, clock, system tray. If the apps people were writing just used the already standard tray rather than hildon, they would be just fine. In one bar across the top or side, I can have a system menu, a task bar (icons and/or text), a tray and clock. I have a fully functional keyboard, although I do not have word completion.

Changing the theme is simple in fvwm as well. It is trivial to make almost identical themes, in varying degrees of sizes to accommodate stylus, small and large fingers.

Just saying :)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

yep, that fvwm is almost scarily flexible. i seems to just never get around to really get ro using it for whatever reason...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I'm back to fvwm again (on my desktop), just because I can make it do exactly what I want. I've used it for years. I had a single little UI feature problem with it, which the then-author fixed on the hour when I emailed about it. Hm, I now see that in the version I'm using now that doesn't seem to work anymore.. will have to look at that. It's probably in the configuration now.