Re: [Usability] totally abstract task/document-oriented desktop questions



On Sat, 2003-10-18 at 19:21, Luis Villa wrote:
> Hey, dudes-
> 
> late night brainstorming led me to a question- in a hypothetical
> document-centric/app-hiding desktop, how does one initiate actions that
> are not document-centric? i.e., if evolution-as-app goes away, how do I
> initiate the action of sending a mail? [For that matter, how does one
> create a new document?]

I had some thoughts about this a while ago, put them in a mockup and
dumped it in the sshots dir :-)

http://esco.mine.nu/sshots/open_save_mockups.jpg

Specifically, the semi-obscured "New Document..." dialog.

The idea is that you select the basic type of document in the list, then
the exact type in the optionmenu. So in that dialog, you'd select "Plain
Text Document" from the list and hit "Create".

It's not totally document-centric, but it's a definate step forward :-),
IMHO.

I think the above could go reasonably nice with a Panel "Documents" menu
(between Applications and Actions currently), with some items:

  New...
  Open...
  Browse...
  Find...
  -----
  Recent #1
  Recent #2
  [...]

Non-document Applications could be moved to a "Tasks" menu:

  Internet    >
      Browse the Web
      Chat on IRC
      Read E-Mail
  Programming >
      Read Documentation
      Develop Application
  System      >
      New Terminal
      Report a Bug
  Browse Home Directory
  Browse Network Locations
  Read Help

or something similar, with a resultant panel menu setup:

[**Documents**  Tasks   Actions         ...]
|   New...     |
|   Open...    |
|   Browse...  |
| ------------ |
|   Recent #1  |
|   Recent #2  |
+--------------+

AFACT, doing this would require an "Action-Name" field in .desktop, and
some extensions to how apps register themselves to gnome-vfs, but
otherwise it shouldn't be that hard to do...

What something like this really needs is user testing though.

-- 
Peace,

    Jim Cape
    http://ignore-your.tv

    "It is literally true that, like Christianity, Socialism
     has conquered the world by defeating itself."
        -- Alexander Berkman, ABC of Anarchism

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