Free time contributors to gnome contribute because they like the project and also to experiment things.

Sometimes I contribute to a patch that I see is difficult for me just because I like challenges, and gnome is a great place for that.

In the last two weeks I experienced both.

The first thing, as the tittle say, I tried to match gtk+ popover design for gnome-shell, and so far I achieved it! It was just a experiment, so I didn’t even ask designers if it is the wanted design before trying to do it. So it was risky, because maybe I was doing it wrong.

Here’s a comparison image:

and the bug report: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=727771

After some kind discussion, designers agree that this is not the wanted design, and that the first one is clearer, and probably is the desing that gtk+ popovers should have, and not backwards. And yeah, they are right! That is why I’m a programmer and they are designers =) (tough of course I guess they accept opinions from everybody, and even more if you provide code to test it in real).

But after all, I did it for experiment new things, so I hope designers don’t feel bad for “killing” the effort =).

In the good side, I fixed a somewhat related bug in the meantime, which probably it wouldn’t get fixed if I didn’t try to do this.

On the other hand, last week I made a challenge. In fact three challenges:

1- Learn how shaders works

2- Modify C code from gnome

3- Learn how mutter works

So after all, and in very little measure, the next bug have all of this, so I tried to fix it:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=700081

After one day and a half, I finally achieved to make a set of patches to provide gnome-shell a real(real because it have inner and outer radius) vignnette effect! Also solving a bug that prevented to have gnome-shell and mutter vignnette effect to match.

So after all, I’m kinda happy I did two set of patches that were a challenge for me. Hope I can maintain this continuity along the weeks (probably I won’t be able)