Re: Revisit "your name on the top bar"

[Matthew East <mdke ubuntu com>]

On 4 July 2011 15:01, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-07-04 at 14:20 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
>> On 28 June 2011 09:17, Joshua Wulf <jwulf redhat com> wrote:
>> > Ah, I see that the user name goes away.
>> >
>> > Is it possible to have:
>> >
>> > "Click the User Menu ..."
>> >
>> >  and have "User Menu" hyperlinked to a definition?
>> >
>> > That would provide a single disambiguation point that could easily be
>> > updated when things like this change, and allow users who know what it
>> > is to read streamlined instructions, and users who don't know what it is
>> > to find the definition at a single click.
>>
>> This is my preferred approach too. Even better than a hyperlink would
>> be a mouseover definition.
>>
>
> What benefit do we get from making up a name for the menu?

I would expect that the menu would already have a name, which would be
used when describing the interface generally, not just in
documentation, but also in marketing materials, design documents and
so on.

I think that it is fairly natural for us to use names, because that is
how human beings tend to interact with each other. It makes things
easier to refer to. That's why I have a name, instead of being
described as "the chubby guy with brown hair and a bald patch over
there". Yes, people have to learn my name when they first meet me, but
each time they meet me after that is a lot easier. In the same way,
using a description of what the menu looks like can be more
cumbersome, inelegant, and unreliable (because it could move, or
change appearance) than just using a name.

The phrase "user menu" certainly appears here:
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/. I don't know too much about
Gnome Shell but I had assumed that the menus would have names. I know
that Unity does:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/10228/whats-the-right-terminology-for-unitys-ui-elements/19166#19166

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF