Re: Application names in menus

[snickell stanford edu]

> Actually, if you take a look at the names of the items in File->New,
> functional names should pretty easily present themselves. So you
> would
> have 'OpenOffice.org Text Document', 'OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet'
> ...

I think this a fantastic point. Why should the application menu contain
the technobabble name when OpenOffice doesn't use that name internally
for creating those types? The reason is because internally to a program
people think "functional", but when it comes to adding items to the
desktop menus, people always seem to get sidetracked by branding and
marketing concerns rather than functionality. I have news! The
applications menu is the gateway to your program, don't boobytrap it.

> with the the added benefit that what you see from the UI is the same
> as
> the gnome menus. But there may not be a need for such long names -
> just
> create a submenu 'OpenOffice.org 1.0' and put the shorter names
> under
> that. 

This is what windows does. Its evil, and probably driven by marketing.
Users shouldn't have to drill down another level (on a TechnoBabble 2.3
name) to access applications they want to use...particularly
applications as essential and key to many people's desktop use as Word
processor, spreadsheet, etc.

-Seth