Re: Proposal: gnome-main-menu for inclusion in GNOME 2.18

[Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com>]

On Fri, 2006-10-20 at 13:04 -0400, William Jon McCann wrote:
> Hi Jim,
> 
> Where should bugs be filed?  I don't see a component in gnome
> bugzilla.  I suppose one should be created.

Just for the record, you don't e-mail them directly to the person who's
name appears first in the about box. We do need a bugzilla product
for this. I would have made one, but someone stole all my perms away.

> * The recent documents list doesn't get cleared correctly.  For
> example: use the standard GNOME places menu to clear the recent
> documents and the slab list doesn't clear.  Is there a way to clear
> the list in slab or do you not look at "inappropriate content"? 

We need a way to clear that list (as well as recent apps) from within
the slab itself, as well.

> * If there aren't enough items to fill one column of the "Show:" pane
> then there is probably no point in showing the second column - use all
> the space for the first.

The reflow is currently LTR (or RTL), in standard text reflow style,
with a maximum of two columns. This (along with general overflow) is
a hard problem to solve, because we want the slab to take up as little
space as possible, yet remain as useful as possible. If we reflow
vertically, what do we limit the number of vertical items to? How well
will this work on say, 800x600? Then what do we do for overflow? We
need some way to deal with many bookmarks and drives being in Places,
and we need to let the user have more than 6 or so favorite apps, in
a way that isn't annoying, and doesn't take up too much space. The
answer to this may be sub-menus and a little change of text, but we're
working on testing some people to figure this out.

> * When I drag a launcher from the panel onto the Computer button I
> expected it to open so I could drop into my favorites list.

Dragging to the Computer button places it in the Favorite Apps list.
There's no need to open the slab and move the mouse up, then release.

> * Might be nice to have Sleep/Hibernate on the System action list
> (using org.gnome.PowerManager).

We're looking into how to make the logout process better. Dealing with
the need for sleep/hibernate is part of that effort.

> * Is there a way to include Places?

We're looking at how we can do this. The current design isn't well
suited to listing things which may vary wildly in amount of content,
such as places. There's no overflow mechanism at the moment.

> Looks really nice though.  And congratulations and thank you for not
> using submenus.

While we've avoided using submenus for the time being, I think they may
be necessary to solve some of the usability issues that exist with the
design. One thing I don't like about using the app browser, is that it
requires me to open a separate program, browse, then open an app. If I
want to open more than one application at some point, and they aren't in
my favorite or recent apps, I have to repeat this much slower process
multiple times to get to the apps. Having "More Applications" pop up a
menu which has the structure of the normal programs menu, would be more
useful I think.

-- dobey