The screenshots in websites is very important for the comunity.
Xirtam wrote:
The screenshots in websites is very important for the comunity.
No, they’re not. And theres nothing to take screenshots of yet.
MYOB wrote:
Xirtam wrote:The screenshots in websites is very important for the comunity.No, they’re not. And theres nothing to take screenshots of yet.
There’s nothing to take screens of, ATM, but once there is, screenshots are important. In case of applications, if someone offers me a screenshot and a short description of his app and another one only offers a complicated description (or none at all, and that’s all too frequent in the open source world) there’s a much bigger chance that I’ll take a second look at the former app.
ChrisK wrote:
MYOB wrote:Xirtam wrote:The screenshots in websites is very important for the comunity.No, they’re not. And theres nothing to take screenshots of yet.
There’s nothing to take screens of, ATM, but once there is, screenshots are important. In case of applications, if someone offers me a screenshot and a short description of his app and another one only offers a complicated description (or none at all, and that’s all too frequent in the open source world) there’s a much bigger chance that I’ll take a second look at the former app.
Considering Haiku R1 will be extremely similar to R5 + BONE, and most of the users of early versions of it will be current or former R5 users, screenshots are still unneeded for a while yet.
MYOB wrote:
Considering Haiku R1 will be extremely similar to R5 + BONE, and most of the users of early versions of it will be current or former R5 users, screenshots are still unneeded for a while yet.
Even if the above is true, I still think screenshots are important. Screenshots makes one really SEE the progress. I remember me checking every day DarkWyrm’s site when he started to work on the app server, as he was posting screenshots of its prototypes, and every new screenshots made me think “wow! I can’t wait to see this thing completed!!!”
And I’m sure it is the same for many other people out there.
One thing is saying: “ok, this project will look as R5”. Another thing is showing a screenshots with the thing running.
I have received some mails since I posted the screenshots of the game kit classes running, many people were amazed, because they didn’t think the progress had reached that point. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been the same if I only had wrote “Ok, we completed the game kit” (and this had been said also at WalterCon, AFAIK, but no one noticed).
Sorry for the long post 
I would be inclined to agree that screenshots help show progress, or at least they help to entice people to browse the website and determine the status of each team…
Even if the only screenshots are of the replacement prefs apps, or the new stylededit/showimage apps, at least it gives the user something they can associate progress with visually.
Even if the screenshots show partial completeness, it still gets people thinking in the right direction - i.e. that progress is being made, and there will eventually be something tangible that they will be able to use in the future.
I don’t think it has anything to do with showing users what the outcome will look like per se - but more along the lines ot letting them know what works and what doesn’t…
I’m sure somebody could scrape together some shots of the bootloader progress from the news sites, the appserver / interface server running on Beos V5 in test mode, and screenshot of say the media server serving up some video / audio to a beos 5 application.
euan wrote:
I'm sure somebody could scrape together some shots of the bootloader progress from the news sites, the appserver / interface server running on Beos V5 in test mode, and screenshot of say the media server serving up some video / audio to a beos 5 application.
If you find where I put it for me, I have a screenshot of me hammering the media kit to death, using I think all the decoders, a fair few different media applications, etc. I (or anyone else) can recreate that pretty easily though.
Jack Burton wrote:
Even if the above is true, I still think screenshots are important.
Indeed. I’ve been on a few projects where people have been told about my/our progress and just say some like, “So what, give me a screenshot or piss off!” I don’t think at this point there is much to see (aside from the CVS of course), but when the time comes, screen shots - IMO - are a must.
SigmaNunki wrote:
Jack Burton wrote:Even if the above is true, I still think screenshots are important.Indeed. I’ve been on a few projects where people have been told about my/our progress and just say some like, “So what, give me a screenshot or piss off!” I don’t think at this point there is much to see (aside from the CVS of course), but when the time comes, screen shots - IMO - are a must.
agreed. give me screenshots or give me death.
Quote:
How will the screenshots differ from BeOS R5?
The goal of Haiku R1 is to be source- and binary-compatible with BeOS R5. Improvements to Haiku will follow only after R1 is completed. FAQ
h_ank wrote:
Quote:How will the screenshots differ from BeOS R5?The goal of Haiku R1 is to be source- and binary-compatible with BeOS R5. Improvements to Haiku will follow only after R1 is completed. FAQ
I’m under the impression (and have seen firsthand in some cases) that not everything will look like R5.
If they’re guaranteed to be 100% the same as R5 - then someone should at least take pictures of the R5 versions and post them on the website - but then again, if they’re finished, why not take pictures of the Haiku versions and post them…
Either way, not everyone following Haiku’s progress is currently using R5 - and I’m sure some of those persons would like to see the progress as well…
It’s not necessarily a matter of how each piece looks, but also a visual representation of a “completed task” - which I beleive is an important psychological technique to gain/retain public interest.
Xirtam wrote:
I agree 100%.
The screenshots in websites is very important for the comunity.
IMO the Status portion of the web site is it’s weakest link like many other parts of this web site.
People should have a direct link to download a nightly build/stable of certain parts of any Haiku components.
Ronald wrote:
Xirtam wrote:I agree 100%.The screenshots in websites is very important for the comunity.IMO the Status portion of the web site is it’s weakest link like many other parts of this web site.
People should have a direct link to download a nightly build/stable of certain parts of any Haiku components.
There is a monthly stable preferences apps pack anyway
If I remember to upload it, I took a shot of the current cvs media kit doing what BeOS media kits do best, playing a lot of stuff without a hiccup, and doing it inside unmodified versions of Dano applications - MediaPlayer, CDBurner, etc. And with a variaty of file formats.
by the way, if you check out darkwyrm’s site and some posts in the news archive, there are a few screenshots in there, but as soon as we have some solid things, believe me, they’ll be up
Yes, post some screenshots - even if you simply take a snap of R5 and pretend it’s Haiku R1 running. You will be losing lots of interested parties by not having anything to ‘show’ for yourselves. Think of it like eBay - would you buy a laptop for $500 or a laptop for $500 with a picture of it attached?
chris.k23 wrote:
Yes, post some screenshots - even if you simply take a snap of R5 and pretend it's Haiku R1 running. You will be losing lots of interested parties by not having anything to 'show' for yourselves. Think of it like eBay - would you buy a laptop for $500 or a laptop for $500 with a picture of it attached?
Yes, I agree completely - except for the part about Ebay - I have a hard time buying ANYTHING from ebay, regardless of picture or not.
It’s a matter of giving visual status of the OS - and the most visual part of the OS is the GUI and tools/apps that come with it. Show the apps that are completed, and people can say “Look, the mouse pref panel is done!”
Like the work on Java 2d support - it’s a lot nicer to show what works than talk about it
LOL :lol: The eBay analogy was a bit tenuous I agree, but you see my point. A lot of the time I’ll pop over to a project’s website to see what’s happening. If there are new screenshots to look at, I’ll stay a lot longer than if there’s only text to read.
I know this sounds a bit arrogant (it’s not meant to be) but the old adage of ‘a picture tells a thousand words’ really does come into effect here - plus it could just keep someone’s attention those few milliseconds longer to get them hooked.
Certainly the thing that got me interested in Haiku (or OBOS as it was then) were StuBear’s superb Deskbar concept shots.
I want to see pictures of appserver and interface kit not rendering properly, cyan boxes, where a control is not yet implemented, and KDL screens. Debugging action shots, and pics of code being complied… Even pics of axel chained to a desk is fine…
euan wrote:
I want to see pictures of appserver and interface kit not rendering properly, cyan boxes, where a control is not yet implemented, and KDL screens. Debugging action shots, and pics of code being complied... Even pics of axel chained to a desk is fine...
I’m a big fan of providing screenshots with posts on my website. I keep a slew of them on the same page as my other Haiku stuff
http://darkwyrm.beemulated.net/openbeos.htm
–DarkWyrm