Re: [Tails-dev] How to replace the green onion

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Author: sajolida
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] How to replace the green onion
intrigeri:
> sajolida wrote (05 Mar 2015 17:03:04 GMT) :
>> I hereby propose to have the list of circuits accessible directly from
>> the green onion as it is the case now in Vidalia. But I'm not sure how
>> this fits with your architectural plans and related
>> security implications.
>
> It should be no problem: assuming the green onion thingie is a GNOME
> Shell extension (this seems to be the only reasonable way to do it
> IMO), then it'll run as the `amnesia' users, who should be able to
> start Tor Monitor anyway.


Cool!

>> Alan, I'm not sure what are the implications of the deprecation of
>> System Tray Icons as I couldn't find anything about that in the GNOME
>> HIG.
>
> The HIG apparently doesn't capture everything that the code does.
> Let me provide some background. In previous versions of GNOME, there
> were two different things:
>
>   * proper panel applets (e.g. NM's one)
>   * icons in the notification area (that very often were things that
>     should really be applets, but their authors were lazy and they
>     hijacked the notification area -- that's what we did for our own
>     OpenPGP applet, oops)


Understood.

> While with GNOME Shell:
>
> * the notification area isn't displayed by default anymore;


Yeah, I've seen the redesign for 3.16 that you sent me.

>   * a third-party extension (topIcons) can be used to restore the old
>     notification area icons placement; no idea how long this hack will
>     work;


That's #8309.

>   * what used to be "proper panel applets" can now be implemented as
>     GNOME Shell extensions.

>
>> But in Tails Jessie we still have various custom widgets in the top
>> bar that expend to more features when you act on them: the Florence
>> keyboard and the OpenPGP Applet. So I guess this is still acceptable...
>
> That's a temporary hack, made possible only via a third-party GNOME
> Shell extension, and I'd like to get rid of as soon as possible
> (https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/8309). Adding more stuff there
> would add to the list of things that we'll have to
> rewrite/replace later.


Ok, so that confirms what I understood already. We can still put *some*
stuff in the top bar (without much change for the user) but that needs
to be done as GNOME Shell extensions. That's more of a infrastructure
and code change than a UX change in the end. Good news.

--
sajolida