The new installer slideshow for Ubuntu Maverick

Just thought I should clear up what’s going on with Ubuntu’s installer slideshow for Maverick, since I’ve been getting lots of bug reports about it.

Today’s beta still has the old Lucid slideshow (with one little change so it isn’t blatantly outdated), but we are working on a new one. It’s all from a smart new design mocked up by Michael Forrest. We’re changing things by adding big screenshots and reusing copy from the Ubuntu tour on the web.

I know, that content is from the Lucid tour, and I’m still running Lucid, but it’s shiny and new at the same time!

Of course, using content from the website does change the underlying tone a little; it is consistent describing what you’re getting rather than (with frequent exceptions) how you start using it. But what’s life without change? What I love about the tour is it’s really simple and well written and it makes some extra effort to show what you can get. I think this is perfect to go with the new Software Centre, which is going to make those options much more relevant to everyday users. So, no more duplicate effort writing introduction text we already have on ubuntu.com. That approach is going to help keep things simple, which is something the project needs (because it is simple and it should convey that simplicity at all levels of its existence… as opposed to my colossal sentences, apparently)!

I guess I also like it because I’m doing less work. Just need to make a nice intro and outro slide, grumble about stuff and tinker with Javascript ;)

Finally, I can’t claim image compression has changed in the last two years to allow this. Andrew, you were right: images are great!

If you have any questions, concerns or ideas about this, please leave a note in the comments and be excellent to each other.

6 Replies to “The new installer slideshow for Ubuntu Maverick”

  1. Great!
    The only problem is that those images will have to be language-specific and there is not much time remaining for such an important l10n work…

  2. Yep, string freeze is the 9th. Unfortunately there's nothing we can do for localizing screenshots this cycle, but I'll see what can be done about minimizing locale-specific content in them. (Text shouldn't play a significant role).

    No idea how I'm going to do that, though, so I'm hoping someone's figured it out. I guess I can get a feeling for the issue by substituting screenshots in a language I don't understand…

    When screenshots were first pondered we considered fetching alternatives from a web service. Lots of logistics, though, so it would need to be slotted in with something more important. Maybe if / when ubuntu.com is localized, or after we've taken over the world…

  3. I don't know, perhaps images substitution is just doable with javascript?

    Assuming that webkit-gtk default user-agent is created according to the 'LANG' environment variable, it may be possible to dynamically point to a folder with relevant and localized images.

    (It's just a proposal, perhaps it's stupid and it can't work ;-))

  4. I think the Ubuntu Manual team developped a tool to localize screenshots, maybe it could be useful here.

  5. I love ubuntu 10.10 beta

    Please watch my video review of this OS

    Screencast style overview review of the New Installer & Updated Style Look & Feel for Ubuntu Linux 10.10 BETA 64bit Maverick Meerkat development release.

    its my best video review ever guys

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