Re: [Usability] A New Start Menu Design, which resemble windows

[Daniele Levorato <daniele levorato infocamere it>]

Il giorno mer, 22/10/2008 alle 20.42 +0800, Long Gao ha scritto:
>     In fact, the real reason why I implemented this start menu is to use a widget of GtkWindow to make a start menu more powerful, 

... more powerful... I think it's not more powerful. It just mixes different concepts that Gnome menu is able to differentiate and so be more clear.
Remember that the gnome philosophy is "less is more" and this is the case!

Frequently used applications? ... fewer clicks to achieve a certain "point" in places or applications menu? A way to quickly see which user is logged? the Gnome Panel is there, with it's menu and it's applets! nothing you can't do or can't present clearly to the user. Never saw something more versatile in Windows.

In you very first post you said that you "always found puzzled of thinking which menu to click when I want to do something"... but you really can't tell if you have to go to "Applications" "Places" or "System"? really? In my opinion it's not true! it's really clear instead, as I could see from my user testing experience. While it's not clear what a "Start" button is! You find yourself very comfortable with that sort of thing just because you "already know it"... perhaps you "come from Windows" I think... 
Unluckily, many users are "affected" badly by their first experience with Windows and expect every system to work like that (I'm talking in general, not about you... just what I saw in my user experience)...
>     I wish that a well structured "menu" could provide more functionality. 
No, in my opinion a well structured menu is the menu that have only the functionality it is intended to, and not "more". For example It's better to leverage the huge horizontal space to have single menus, one of them is "Applications" that dials only with Applications. It's clear. It's simple. It's usability...

>      
>     From the point of my view, I always want to find some good ideas from Windows, which I thought was totally a mistake:). The start menu might be a difference.

It's good to take ideas from other Desktops, as long as they don't break any copyright ;-)
Copying the "idea" (if we can call it so) of Windows main menu is not a good idea in my opinion. I think that some people wants it just because "they're used to it". I had many experiences in this sense: many users want to keep an old applications UI (even if it's absolutely wrong), just because it is part of their knowledge, and they feel "changes" as bad things, somehow like start learning again from the beginnings.
But take a "fresh" (uncompromised) user... it will find Gnome menu very intuitive, and Windows menu something "really strange".

In my opinion we should not make Gnome be like Windows, just to make users more comfortable to switch their Desktop. Leave this to KDE ;-) (joking)
Sometimes there's the need to innovate, to follow paths that the others don't follow, to reach results that the others don't reach...
This is the path that I think gnome is following... and that Apple summarize with it's "think different" moto.

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Ing. D a n i e l e  L e v o r a t o
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