Re: Menubar (and Empty Default Desktop) Proposals for GNOME 2.10

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Bryan Clark">

> System seems to be very technical term, were as Desktop is softer, more
> widely used term to describe the system or the pseudo root file system (a
> la ms desktop); essentially Desktop is a grab bag term that definitely
> does better than Actions and is probably less scary than System.

Oh, but dude, 'Desktop' is even worse than 'Computer'. If we went with the
"Applications  Places  Something" menu layout, here's what would be in the
'Something' menu (keep in mind this is current-Ubuntu-layout inspired):

  Desktop Preferences >
  System Configuration >
  ---
  About GNOME...
  Help                <- these three are wishy-washy, but I'd like to move
  Take Screenshot...     help and "about gnome/distro" to here
  ---
  Lock Screen
  Log Out

Pat will totally steal our socks if we abuse the term 'Desktop' again, and
none of this really says 'Desktop' any more than 'Computer' or 'System'. (I
fully agree that 'System' sucks.)

Throwing another random option for the menu layout:

  [Foot]  Applications  Places

Which is very Mac. Some will say that the logo isn't discoverable and/or
provides no affordance for the items within, but... These are top level
items. Anyone with half a brain will clicky-clicky and learn what's going
on. The learnability is not bad.

(Note that I think a lot of this is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,
because at some stage we're going to have to seriously think about the
panel, applets, launchers, etc... But in the mean time, we can make things
incrementally better.)

- Jeff

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linux.conf.au 2005: Canberra, Australia                http://linux.conf.au/
 
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