Re: slab menu

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Mon, 5 Feb 2007, William Jon McCann wrote:

> Hi Calum,

> > > How is it slow to get to things vs a traditional hierarchal menu? My
> > > important apps are two clicks away -> open menu -> click.  Hierarachal
> > > menus more clicks than that.  Don't like the default list?  Drag from
> > > the app browser and drop them on the menu.
> >
> > Much as we'd all like it to be untrue, that's still more customisation
> > than many (most?) "average" users are either willing to do, or have the
> > knowledge to do, or (in some cases) are allowed to do by their sysadmin.

> One thing that I think bears mentioning is that really no one uses the
> menus as the sole interface to their applications.  They use the menus

or they use the terminal and other utilities like the Run dialog and
various applets to quickly launch known programs.  your point that
menus are no the be all and end all is well taken.

>  * accessing common tools quickly (who goes to the menu for a web browser?)

[list of downsides to menu based approach, which in many cases slab does
offer some improvement]

> Regarding configuration, I think the slab is in a better position to
> provide an interface that doesn't require configuration of quick access
> to the most used tools.  It apparently has something called "Recently
> Used Applications" (which is empty for me but I can imagine what it is
> supposed to do).  Even though I think "Recently" isn't really as
> interesting as "Most Frequently".

This is a feature which would be welcome in the menus too, slab is just
one implementation of this feature.  (Interesting to note recent
suggestions to connect Deskbar into the slab searchbox, another example of
similar features being presented quite differently.)

> one).  And yeah, it sucks.
>
> So, I've been pretty happy with my switch to using the slab (and going

Unfortunately the demerits of menus and the praise of those who are quite
happy with slab is not reason enough to make the change and an easy way
to revert to the menu based approach is a necessity (preferably in a way
that remains possible even on a locked down machine).

Given that Novell use the slab in a single panel setup it remains unclear
if those who want to adopt slab also want to change the panel layout to
match what Novell use, it would seem strange to me to do otherwise.


-- 
Alan Horkan