In the same spirit as zerojay's widget proposals thread I'd like to try to collect ideas for desktop enhancements for Maemo 5. These are things that you think would improve the overall usage experience on Maemo 5 at the desktop level. In other words, status bar applets, changes to the dashboard, enhancements to Hildon Desktop, and general device customization. Let me give you a few of my ideas as examples:

• xmodmap control panel - The 3-row keyboard on the N900 is, unfortunately, missing many characters that make certain activities much easy. I'd like to see some sort of control panel that allows users to bind characters to certain functions on the keyboard (i.e., Ctrl-Fn-V for a pipe, Ctrl-Enter for tab, etc.). Although accessing xmodmap from XTerm is simple enough, modifying keyboard mappings is a fairly involved process that will be over the heads of most users.
• ACMonitor - I'd like to see ACMonitor ported to Fremantle with a nice control panel front-end. This would allow the user to change the various power-saving options based on their current power source. This would make it easy to work around things like the SSH timeout with WiFI PSM by turning PSM off while you're sitting at your desk with the AC plugged in.

So, what enhancements can you think up?

well i hope i understood right.

i watched many videos and saw many pictures, but i didnt see small notification icons, just the banners. i thought it would be usefull to have small icon on the desktop on the side of reception bars, statuslight, Wireless activity GPS activity icons. new mail envelope with@, sms an envelope SMS stating in it, mms envelope with MMS, IM a speech bubble with "IM" in it. and for backround media an arrow with a music note just to inform you "hey there is media activity in the background" since you could be on a desktopview with out the music player widget on, and just forgotten you have the media player on for the whole day

I just thought of doing a theming thread but it fits in here as well!
the stuff is not only desktop but well will repost it somewhere else if needed

as the n900 is capable of GL and the fancy blue spirit desktop theme already shows of a some alike 3D movement of the desktop elements, I thought of a desktop with a globe as background (moon, earth, osmarender, you name it) rotating as you move your desktop-view, also capable of centering your current location to the home (first) desktop. (I was thinking of compiz's desktop cube as globe)

to the frontends people may like (or not, I dont care)

powermanagement, events:

• some kind of laptop-mode-tools with easy to use shifters and buttons input
• event handler frontend to manipulate "keyboard-in/out", "powerbtn" registration used to trigger something

WiFi:

• show (and choose for connection) nearby WiFi devices with signalstrength as indicator for distance (cant remember the name but something like this is build in with the latest DD-WRT firmware)
• a kismet-like and alike toolset

file-handling, -system:

• macroscripting (automagicaly records what you do and provides a button to do it at once, again and again)
• fileconverter (ps2pdf jpg2png etc) frontend
• lvm (should be capable of moving files to another device to remove the SD card)
• crypting. remember its eating CPUs so settings with low CPU usage or single-file-encryption should be enough, this tool should also automagicaly lock the vault after time and ask for passwords if needed
• GnuPG may be useful as well
• networkmount. mounting your windows/linux/network storage (maybe in relation to your WiFi network?).

images:

• watermarker, a tool to make a pics background convert to alpha transparent and add it to a folder/filelist of pics at X,Y position and add this text at X,Y xPts huge
• gif-o-mator. take this $list of pics and create a 15sec $gif

I cant give desktopPC examples as I'm not familiar with GUI tools for background issues (I'm more of a vi guy). I am a dedicated debian fan and will have my first smartphone with the n900 (but was already sucking all the good out of my SE-W880i with javaprograms)

Portrait mode!

}:^)~

there is portrait already and if a program is portrait or swaps depends on the coding

Let's please not let this thread be dominated by portrait stuff! There are other threads for that.

Some ideas:

- I'd like a way to display the wallpaper only (i.e hide the icons, shortcuts & widgets). I just downloaded some pictures of some nice ladies for my wallpapers and realized I have way too many items on screen to actually enjoy them...:/

- some generic way to turn off live widgets but still keep it on screen. For instance RSS and facebook widgets for me are things I'd like to activate only when needed...

- I wouldn't mind if it was possible to have two separate desktops which would be switchable, eg. work and freetime. Each with their own widgets, shortcuts etc. (also multiplying the available screen estate with two...would be a bonus IMHO)

//K

Every desktop transition includes a number of the desktop. i.e sliding from 1-> 2 will have the number 2 appear in the middle of the screen with eye-candies of course.

The default desktop on the N900 already spans over 4 screens. you can easily set up 2 of them for work and the other two for home.

or do you mean 2 completely different sets of screens for work&home? then it would be a valid enhancement request

For me, something like LoadApplet that shows CPU and memory usage is very important.