Re: About Panels - aka lynching time

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 16:58, Hendrik Richter wrote:
> 
>   I would prefer to put something like this:
> 
>   +----------+
>   | Epiphany |
>   --------------------+
>   | Preferences...    |
>   | About Epiphany    |
>   | About GNOME       |
>   |-------------------|
>   | Quit              |
>   +-------------------+
> 
> in every GNOME app. 
> 

I particularly dislike this one because it encourages the idea that
applications and the desktop are all the same thing and every app needs
to be sucked into the GNOME project. GNOME should be the desktop shell
and core platform that defines the UI guidelines; apps should be "GNOME
integrated," rather than "GNOME apps."

All "GNOME app" really can mean is "app is part of the GNOME release"
but that isn't a user-interesting distinction so shouldn't result in
changes to the menus.

A nitpicky point, but my view on it anyway.

Maybe the more relevant thing is, as a GNOME contributor, I didn't hack
on Epiphany; so the "About GNOME" there isn't a credit, it's an ad.
Which just seems tacky.

The user also has no context here; "About what? there are garden gnomes
in my web browser?"

Users that do know what GNOME is tend to have this really vague idea
which amounts to "all GUI apps and gadgets" or "the entire operating
system" - I get Red Hat bugs like "my GNOME locks up the computer" or
"GNOME can't connect to the Internet."

Havoc