GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 681358
Display photos of cities for world clocks
Last modified: 2020-11-24 14:14:26 UTC
The design for clocks [1] includes photos of cities for each of the world clocks. In fact, it includes two photos for each city - one for day and one for night. Having these images would help to bring a bit of life to the clocks UX. Note: in the future, we might want to use these images for the single world clock view or for full screen mode, so it would be good to have them at a high resolution. [1] https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Clock#Hi-res
It would be great to get the community involved with this for submitting pictures. Some kind of short project/contest? As the collection can get quite big we probably want to host some of them on gnome.org somewhere, and fetch them when needed. If we're going to have them as full backgrounds we also need specifications (like xml files?) for each image on where the clock should be placed and which colour (dark/light) the text should be.
Maybe XML files aren't necessary. We could just add -night and -day to the images name and then, follow clocks mockup on gnome design with a white transparent background and black text for day pictures and black transparent background with white text for night pictures. It would be great to start this as soon as possible, since it will take a while to be almost complete.
It would be much nicer to have the position adjusted for the pictures. This makes the views more dynamic and surprising. I don't think it looks that great in the mockups to be honest, it obscures the pictures. I'm more imagining a full window view of this. Currently the backgrounds don't really add anything. I want to get lost in the picture.
To begin with, I think we can create a short list of major cities that we want to provide custom images for. This wouldn't have to be huge; we can probably base it on existing city rankings [1] plus maybe some highly populous ones [2]. We will also need two good default pictures for day and night. There are some existing resources [3, 4] that we could possibly collect images from. However, there are two questions that need to be answered first: 1) What is the minimum size that we will need? We might want to use the images for full screen mode, which would require that they are able to fill the screen on a wide range of monitors. 2) How would the images need to be licensed so that we can redistribute them? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city#World_City_Survey [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population [3] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photographs_of_cities [4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Night_by_city
Also http://git.gnome.org/browse/libgweather/plain/data/major-cities.txt
I spoke to Jimmac about requirements for artwork the other day. He recommended that we use a minimum resolution of 2560x1600 for city photos. It also turns out that we require cc by sa licensing for background images; it makes sense to apply the same rule here. One tricky thing here is displaying attribution information. A few ideas about this: * where possible, we should select artwork that does not require attribution, and we should contact content creators to ask if they are happy to waive attribution for GNOME * if we have good artwork that requires attribution, we should display the information in as subtle a way as possible. perhaps we could overlay a semi-transparent button over the image when it is shown at a large size. this could then link to the image source. I just had a quick look on the wikimedia site, and it does seem that there are potential candidate images there. For example: * London by day: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_Skyline.jpg * London by night: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_Eye_Westminster_Bridge_and_Palace_of_Westminster.jpg - * New York by day: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Empire_State_Building_Aerial.JPG * New York by night: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Bridge_at_Night.jpg So I think the main thing blocking us is 1) a place to store images along with the necessary metadata 2) a way to display attribution information
(In reply to comment #6) > I spoke to Jimmac about requirements for artwork the other day. He recommended > that we use a minimum resolution of 2560x1600 for city photos. Why so big? The biggest example I can find is https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/clocks/clocks-clock-view.png > I just had a quick look on the wikimedia site, and it does seem that there are > potential candidate images there. For example: Just to make sure, it's ok for Day and Night to be of totally different locations/angles?
Attribution can be made in the about dialog of Clocks maybe?
(In reply to comment #7) > Why so big? We've talked about having a fullscreen mode in the past. I'd like to keep that as an option at least. > Just to make sure, it's ok for Day and Night to be of totally different > locations/angles? I'd say so.
(In reply to comment #8) > Attribution can be made in the about dialog of Clocks maybe? It's hard to tell what is required for attribution. To me, it seems that indicating something on or around each image would be clearer.
Created attachment 229365 [details] LONDON CLOCK FOR DAY TIME I tried to make a clock for london using day time picture using inkscape. looking forward for your response.
I had a play around with the mockups to see how we could incorporate attribution. The idea I came up with is to include an information menu button in the toolbar, which would include a link to the image source and a link to the licence. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5031519/clocks/fullscreen-with-overlay.png I'm actually starting to think that this could be a cool feature - it's promoting open content, after all. I'd be happy to start collecting images, if we can come up with a way to store them and the associated metadata.
Created attachment 242410 [details] Relevant art, Bing on Xbox 360 Bing on Xbox 360 has a background image and you can see attribution by pressing the X button on your controller. This is explain with on-screen text. I'm attaching a picture as relevant art. (In reply to comment #12) > I had a play around with the mockups to see how we could incorporate > attribution. The idea I came up with is to include an information menu button > in the toolbar, which would include a link to the image source and a link to > the licence. > > https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5031519/clocks/fullscreen-with-overlay.png Why not add the text directly on the picture the same way we show the time? Of course I mean smaller and in a visible yet subtle location. Maybe in the bottom right corner? Then make the text an hyperlink to the source webpage for the picture. > I'm actually starting to think that this could be a cool feature - it's > promoting open content, after all. Indeed. That was my first reaction when I read your earlier comment stating that we should look for images that don't require attribution. > I'd be happy to start collecting images, if we can come up with a way to store > them and the associated metadata. Maybe we should talk to the wikimedia people to see if they don't already have a way to sort their data and get the relevant stuff? They may already use that to choose quality stuff that lands on the first page of Wikipedia for instance.
We could use a Flikr Group Pool like what Ubuntu does for its wallpaper contest.
(In reply to comment #12) > I had a play around with the mockups to see how we could incorporate > attribution. The idea I came up with is to include an information menu button > in the toolbar, which would include a link to the image source and a link to > the licence. > > https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5031519/clocks/fullscreen-with-overlay.png > This indeed looks very beautiful! at least when compared with my current implementation which is still on a very early development stage https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/108659134963381824357/albums/5895981801132588897/5895981803523736178 )) > I'm actually starting to think that this could be a cool feature - it's > promoting open content, after all. > > I'd be happy to start collecting images, if we can come up with a way to store > them and the associated metadata.
Could we show a map with a dot if no image is available?
(In reply to comment #16) > Could we show a map with a dot if no image is available? Wouldn't the dot be hidden behind the time? A few good stock images might be better.
(In reply to comment #17) > (In reply to comment #16) > > Could we show a map with a dot if no image is available? > > Wouldn't the dot be hidden behind the time? A few good stock images might be > better. That depends on how we choose what part of the world we are showing and how we are shifting it. This is useful for the user as it adds information. And I can imagine it being more visually attractive than the stock images we use right now. It just makes the dumb-image to something useful for me.
The new design got rid of that feature. Related to bug 707967