On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 12:19 PM, pulkomandy <pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, Aug 03, 2012 at 11:35:35AM -0400, Ryan Leavengood wrote: >> So to bring this back to the discussion at hand, showing the version >> of applications (at least some of the "major ones") in about boxes is >> a viable reason to have at least some individual about boxes, since >> IMO the version of these applications should not necessarily be tied >> to Haiku's version. > > Wait, isn't that the work of the package manager app ? I see Ryan's point, you may want to include a separate version number for an app than the Haiku release, especially for major apps. Think Windows 8 and IE 10, etc. > Back on topic: rather than allowing any icon in BAlerts, I'd keep them > to the standard ones, and add the icon in the dedicated about box API, > which happens to look like (and inherit from) BAlert right now, but > could be changed to something else and get a different look. I'd make > the icon a lot bigger, something like 128x128 or even more. So what I've done is convert BAboutWindow into a regular BWindow. The About window features the grey stripe on the left side, the application icon as well as the application name, version number, and copyright information. I like the idea of making the icon 128x128. Below that is a read-only BTextView containing, all optionally, a short application description, authors, special thanks, version history, and extra information. System apps can fill out the top section only, omitting the bottom BTextView completely. This makes for a very simple about box and makes localization easy. Third party apps can then fill out the extra pieces they want to include and the result will be nicely formatted for them. Of course, 3rd party apps are also free to create their own about boxes if they wish, this is merely a convenience.