A redesign of the current USB creator for neon (based on Rosa USB creator) and edited based on feedback in VDG Telegram/IRC channel - core notion is to simplify the process by making it an easy 1-2-3 action. Pick ISO, pick USB, then write to drive.
Mock Description
Mock Description
Inline Comments
That should look like the standard plasma spinner I suppose?
@jriddell That is a bit tricky, I don't think we have the plasma busy indicator as a qwidget anymore. So you'd have to use KPixmapSequence which I think won't work with the svg which contains the actual plasma spinner. So perhaps the way to go is redoing the UI in qml? No clue how much work that is, but it would give the most visual consistency with Plasma. Kind of entirely dependent of how well backend code is separated from frontend code as doing this UI in qml is easy so long as the backend is easily accessible. Alternatively one could put a qmlscene into the qwidgets app and then only render the busy indicator in the scene, which may well be less code albeit a bit meh.
Comment Actions
No no that is just a random place holder @sitter so ignore it for now, as for the "yes I do" etc let me change that properly
Inline Comments
Comment Actions
This is in a really good place now I think. @jriddell thoughts?
Inline Comments
Is there a reason this is a popup? The more I look at it the more I think this would be more visually pleasing as a step in a wizard.
i.e.
Select ISO and Drive -> click 'create' -> window changes to inform you that this is destructive -> click 'write' or 'cancel' -> window changes to either progress view or back to iso and drive selection.
Granted I might just be thinking this now because the pictures show the the entire progress all at once which changes perception. Also, as I am writing this I do wonder if we want the "interruption" a popup window causes here. This is some serious decision the user needs to make here.
Comment Actions
I am working on the KDE ISO Image Writer as part of GSoC and based on this discussion I created the following mockups:
As you can see on the above sketches, the design I am planning to implement is a wizard with 3 steps (1. Select ISO, 2. Select USB Drive, 3. Write ISO Image).
Any thoughts on this?
Comment Actions
Looks good! It doesn't follow the original mockup in that the flash drive selector is on another screen, but that's probably fine.
Two suggestions: in the first screenshot, I would change "Browse" to "Choose...", and change "File..." to "Path to ISO image..."
See also:
https://hig.kde.org/style/writing/labels.html#using-ellipses-in-labels
https://hig.kde.org/style/writing/placeholder.html
Comment Actions
The flash drive selector is on another screen to avoid using dialog windows extensively. The user will be allowed to proceed to the flash drive selection screen only after selecting a valid ISO image.
I started implementing the wizard and this is what I have so far:
I am thinking of displaying, in the empty space, information about the ISO image such as:
Distribution: KDE Neon (Guessed based on the ISO file name)
Size: 1.2 GiB
SHA256SUM: 9150c74c5f92d51a92857f4b9678105ba5a676d308339a353b20bd38cd669ce7
MD5SUM: 0800fc577294c34e0b28ad2839435945
When no ISO image is selected, the window would look like this:
This comment was removed by GB_2.
Comment Actions
I have one comment: ISO files are supposed to be burned to optical media. The fact that one can create hybrid ISOs which can also be written to USB drives doesn't mean that all ISOs can be written to USB drives. Most Linux distros generate hybrid ISOs, but some do not, and other operating systems (Windows, for example) do not.
Given this, I think it's a bit confusing to call it ISO image writer, and then only provide the capability to dd to a USB drive. The "ISO" image writer can't do the only official thing ISOs can be written to - optical media.
Comment Actions
The name seems accurate: it's an app to write ISO images, because it only supports the "write" use case and not the "burn" use case. If it supported optical media too, it might be more aptly named "ISO Image Writer/Burner" :)
Furthermore, this technical detail seems increasingly less relevant as fewer and fewer computers even ship with an optical drive.
Comment Actions
An issue I see is that on the second view there is no indication of what ISO image you selected, so if you selected the wrong file you have no idea of knowing.
And is the lack of a 'persistent' option by design?
Comment Actions
The UI for the latest implementation is very good. I have only one suggestion. When no valid USB disks are mounted, instead of displaying a blank combobox with no entries, instead hide the combobox and show a centered label that says, "Please plug in a USB disk"
Comment Actions
My comment is that the final page once it has succeeded a write to USB should have buttons "Write Another USB" or "Close". Current I expect there to be buttons there and the green tick box looks like a button.
Comment Actions
This is how it looks when hiding the combobox. Without the combobox we have a lot of empty space after the label:
We could also keep the combobox and use placeholder text instead:
Comment Actions
This got implemented and released: https://fbgsoc.home.blog/2019/08/22/kde-iso-image-writer-release-announcement/
There once was an argument raised that accepting labels should be communicating what happens so this probably would read "Write to Drive" whereas the no button should be "Abort" or "Cancel". No clue if that actually got into the KDE HIG tho.