Debian Packages Screenshots Repository Launched

Christoph Haas writes "A picture is worth a thousand words. And thanks to screenshots.debian.net this finally comes true for Debian packages. The new website was launched just a week ago and has already collected screenshots for 740 packages shipping with the Linux distribution — with new uploads pouring in every hour. Debian users can finally get an impression of how an application would look before installing it."

Great, but needs guidelines.

[pwnies]

Great idea, but it needs some guidelines. Styling being the most obvious one (no I don't want to see how it looks using the custom skin you made that shows off several varieties of wood), but much more importantly is libraries. If you have a look through their "things needing screenshots" section, you'll notice that it's full of libs, many of which have no interface at all. That being the case, why are they there? Seems to me like all the data here needs some garbage collection and more rigid guidelines.

More Colab Please

[pembo13]

Would have been really better if they had tried to gather some cross distro support, and host it somewhere other than *.debian.net. Especially as we are moving toward a package UI abstraction in the form of PackageKit.

Screenshots

[KasperMeerts]

Great idea, absolutely but is it really necessary? When I want to try out a package, I immediately just type the name into Google Images and get a good impression that way.
But it's of course great for Linux-newbs to see it. It's probably more eyecandy than useful.

Re:Great, but needs guidelines.

[X0563511]

Hard to enter information in on application that requires you to be examining the other application, if they arn't both on screen at once.

Different kinds of work require different layouts.

Also, just because you use your windows maximized, doesn't mean you can't dial that back to take a screenshot. If your widgets can't handle a resize, said application has some issues...

Re:Great, but needs guidelines.

[camperdave]

I've been thinking for a while now that what we need is a comic book style layout. As applications open windows, a new panel opens up, shrinking all the other windows so that every non-minimized window gets screen space with no overlapping. For example: One window would take the whole screen; two would split the screen and be side by side; three would be done as one on the left half, two splitting the right half, one on top, one below; etc. The panels would be resizeable and it should be easy to re-sequence the display.