Re: Replacing control center menus

[Jon Nettleton <jon nettleton gmail com>]

On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 17:33 +0000, Thomas Wood wrote:
> Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro wrote:
> > On Ter, 2006-12-12 at 11:51 -0500, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> >> On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 15:26 +0100, �ienne Bersac wrote:
> >>
> >>> A menu longer that 10 entry is very painful. Often, Gnome properties
> >>> menu is about 20 entry when you install some additionnal softwares.
> >>> Gnome is the only desktop which keep using this outdated
> >>> "control-center". A control center is far more usable and accessible
> >>> (especially if it provide search).
> >> This also could mean that we have too many capplets.
> > 
> >   Agreed.
> > 
> >   But even if we can't get away from a multitude of capplets, there's an
> > alternative solution: add an extra level of preferences "categories", as
> > we do for the applications menu.
> > 
> 
> Four clicks to get to a preference window? Sounds a bit excessive.
> 
> We had the discussion about the number of capplets already on the 
> control center list. It was generally agreed that it would be nice to 
> merge some of them, but (as far as I know) all except one of the 
> suggestions had problems. And after that, the biggest issue is finding 
> some developers with enough time to actually do the work.
> 
> I do think using a shell window is easier than a menu, especially when 
> it has search and filter features. It is also likely to be more familiar 
> to users coming from other desktops.
> 
But what is being used for the search functionality?  Beagle? Time to go
buy a super-computer so I can change the sensitivity of my mouse :-)  I
know that search/tag/filtering is the hot topic, but how is that better
here?  

Someone mentioned 4 mouse clicks to get to an applet is ridiculous.
With a window that needs searching, we are talking a mouse click, wait
for application to load, multiple keyboard presses, another mouse click,
then you are where you want to be.  That is a lot more back and forth
between the keyboard and mouse than a menu.

Jon