Re: Recently used applications

[Todd Kulesza <todd dropline net>]

How about organizing the "Recent Documents" menu by application type? 
For instance, text documents would be group together, spread sheets 
would be grouped togeter, etc.  Then there could be a header menu item 
for each group which launches the default application for that file type 
without loading a document.  Say you have The GIMP setup to handle image 
files and AbiWord set as your word processor--you'd have a list like:

+-------------------------+
| Image Editor (The GIMP) |
+-------------------------+
|ImageFileYouOpened-1.png |
|ImageFileYouOpened-2.png |
+-------------------------+
| Word Processor (AbiWord)|
+-------------------------+
|TextFileYouOpened-1.abw  |
|TextFileYouOpened-2.abw  |
+-------------------------+

And so on...
This way users could have easy access to the programs they use the most, 
and you could add in something like "IRC Client" as a header--it just be 
directly followed by another header.  Of course, list would need to be 
editable to that users can select what headers are visible, but some 
sane defaults would provide a nice start for most users.

Todd