Re: Recently used applications

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Tue, 2002-10-29 at 13:28, Calum Benson wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-10-29 at 01:50, John McCutchan wrote:
> 
> > Yes, I switched over some people from Windows XP to gnome 2 (RedHat 8)
> > And a repeated comment, was where are the list of my recent applications?
> > People like this feature, most people would use Word, Internet Explorer,
> > Excel and Windows Media player all the time, so they would always be in
> > that list. So for them it was a two click process instead of a one click
> > scan list (That as a non power user you are unfamiliar with and don't
> > care to get familiar with), click. 
> 
> > A comment I got was "I hate having to search through the menus just to find 
> > my movie player".
> 
> Sounds like you're in a great position to gather some usability data for
> us here :)  Some things it would be useful to find out:
> 
> - Why didn't those users create shortcuts for those application in XP's
> shortcut bar, which would have allowed them to launch them with a single
> click rather than two or more?
> 
> - Similarly, why would they prefer a recent applications menu in GNOME
> over the ability to create a launcher on the panel?

I just played around with my sister's XP box this weekend, looking at
the start menu, among other things. She played a bit with mine at the
same time. Her comment was something along the lines of 'you mean, the
programs you use don't just show up in your menu?' The
recently-used-apps menu Just Works for newbies. It's not as fast as
throwing things on the panel /if you know you can do that/, granted. But
I'm not sure how many people do, especially when recently used things
Just Show Up on the start menu- the motivation to play around is low. I
have no idea if she knows about the XP feature or not, to be honest; I
can poke her and ask.

Luis