Rajko & Martin, Thanks for welcoming me. I am here to participate and do my part whatever way I can. I am aware of the ongoing improvement work and I am learning more about them so that I can participate. At this stage I am using OpenSUSE 10.2 on my laptop. My desktop box is going to be 10.2 (which was supposed to be by now :P ). Before opening my mouth I want to see 10.3 (virtualization?) in action so that I know whats the latest state. Should a user expect major changes in desktop experience on 10.3 from 10.2? Software Portal / Application Manager is really a cool concept. Once it works and well integrated into desktop workflow, this is going to remove the major pain of desktop management. I can't wait to see it working. As I said, I am yet to know more to make useful comment. Here are some thoughts that may/may not make sense. As our desktops are more connected than ever, it is a frequent practice of an application to do something over the net and then ask for user notification/intervention. Common example being notifying availability of updates, email etc. And with Googles model of online apps we are yet to see integrated model of desktop/online computing. As a result our system tray/panel is becoming a forest of icons with every application setting-up/registering its own method of doing online services integration. So I was thinking that it could be a good idea to develop an architecture where a single system component (lets call it System Agent) will provide a framework for applications to register it applet modules that will do the application specific online bits. The system agent will be presented in the Desktop UI in a clean and simple manner (a single icon in system tray) and the applications will provide a mostly uniform (yet application specific) event notification / user intervention request to the user. This system will also help the underlying OS to notify / interact to the user. So starting from daemons, kernel modules, email arrival, software update ... any event / notification communicated to user through a defined framework and hence most importantly with a consistent Look & Feel. The initial idea came to my mind as part of the Software Portal / Application Manager concept where I guess there would be an agent in my system which will check & notify me of availability of updates / new arrival. Then I thought why not a generic framework what more apps can use and provide a consistent look & feel. I am not sure if I could explain what I tried to. Please comment so I can clarify. I wanted to add more bits regarding some UI issues. I will take it slow :D. Also I will cover some in my other email in reply to Silviu. Regards, Mohammad -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ux+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-ux+help@opensuse.org