Re: PROPOSAL: UISG Menu Line Standardization

["Ben 'The Con Man' Kahn" <xkahn cybersites com>]

On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, Bowie Poag wrote:

> > >I would completely agree, provided their is a gnome-wide option that would
> > >allow the user to toggle between the foot icon and some kind of text
> > >(program, applications, whatever) - I personally prefer the foot
> > >idea, but have talked to several people who far prefer all text...
> > 
> > Nod, the gnomeprint should have the capability of being changed to either text
> > or graphic and this should not be an application specific change, but instead,
> > a Gnome wide change.
> 
> Its going to take alot for us to agree to change "Program" to (foot icon).
> 
> The reasoning behind this is because it breaks consistancy. It needs to be
> all text, or all graphics, across the board. If you change Program to
> (foot), you might as well change Edit to a pair of scissors, View to a
> magifying class, Options to a question mark, Help to an exclamation mark.
> 
> Consistancy is key here, for the UISG at least.. Sure, we all agree
> badging is a "good thing" .. But it doesnt justify breaking consistancy to
> do so, imho. I'd be interested in hearing opinions to the contrary.

	Alright...  I disagree with you.  At first I didn't like the
footmenu at all.  I didn't see a good reason why we should change the old
"the left menu is File (or sometimes something else) and it must contain
exit.  

	But exit doesn't really belong in File.  It goes there just for
convention and because it is a commonly used function.  So what is the
better choice?  A menu which manipulates application functions!  What do
we call it?  Program?  No.  Application?  No.  Prog?  No.  

	All those words feel too clunky.  The added functionality isn't
worth moving a very commonly used menu so far to the right.  (That's why
people felt so weird about these menu names.  File (or whatever) should
still be very far left.

	So should the menu be named after the application?  No.  Moving
the menus over by a variable length based on the name of the applicaiton
is clunky.  Imagine this menubar:

	|| Electric Eyes   Edit   Window   Help  

	It just doesn't "feel" right.  

	But a GNOME icon!  Why, users should be used to clicking on that!
They'll click it first -- just to see what it does.  And we can encourage
that.  Make it LOOK like a button.  Give it a nice Tooltip.  Make it
standard across all the applications.  It's small, it looks good, and I'd
imagine that it'll be very useable for advanced users.  (Esp. with a good
keysym.  I'd recommend Meta-` (next to the '1') as a default.

						-Ben

------------------------------------ |\      _,,,--,,_  ,) ----------
Benjamin Kahn                        /,`.-'`'   -,  ;-;;'
(212) 924 - 2220                    |,4-  ) )-,_ ) /\
ben@cybersites.com --------------- '---''(_/--' (_/-' ---------------
          Meet Linux: Forrest Gump as an operating system.