Re: The relationship between Desktop and Panel

[Tom Vogt <tom lemuria org>]

Bowie Poag <bjp@primenet.com> wrote:
> > However, I've not changed my opinion that not EVERYTHING should reside on
> > the panel.
> 
> Containing the sum of Gnome's operability within the panel is as much of a
> crutch as it is a mistake; The panel should only be a point of reference
> among many; One of several ways of going about a given task (launching
> apps, checking stuff, whatever.) As much as I like the panel, to
> encapsulate everything within it, would be a huge, huge mistake.

nobody's asking for it. :)

except that it should be POSSIBLE should the user wish to do it that way.


> > I also remain worried about the desktop being too much of a mess to
> > navigate.
> 
> This is not our responsibility. However, we can reduce the likelyhood of
> the user's desktop becoming a huge graveyard of icons by giving them a
> more elegant and efficient means of accessing their favorite/most used
> items.

one of the reasons that I asked for a clean, structured launcher facility in
the panel. :)

> Ever see a typical Win95 user's desktop? They have the tendency of
> amassing dozens of icons on the desktop, all shortcuts, because they
> neither want to bother with digging them out of folders, or accessing
> them via some clumsy-ass hack like the "Start" button. 

right.


> The principle reason behind the Start menu's failure in Win95 was its very
> design -- The user does NOT want to have to hunt and dig through 3, 4 or 5
> sublayers of menus, and wade through 40 or 50 menu items on the way, in
> order to select a desired item in what appears to be a giant tree of crap
> which lacks any real coherent, logical structure. 

though this IS mainly a problem of the implementation, not the concept, the
later does tend to end up in something like this.


> For those of you who never had the luxury of using an Amiga for extended
> periods of time, AmigaDOS 2.04 introduced a thing called the Tools menu.
> With it, users could add their own manually-named entires into a menu,
> similar to the Mac's "Apple Menu"..Except the user has the choice of what
> order the menu items are in, what they do, what theyre named, etc. I
> remember my Tools menu from years back.. I had like 50 different things in
> the Tools menu. Everything from "Reboot" to "Check To See If I Have Any
> Mail" to "Edit System Journal"...All of these options were nothing more
> than hand-named Menu entries, which executed a program, or a batch file
> that did something. Simple, easy, elegant, and clean. I have yet to hear
> of something more simple, or more effective.

sounds cool and should definitly be possible. however, we've been talking
about what the gnome default configuration should look like, and given the
respective market shares, I'm afraid that people will mistake ANYTHING that
even looks remotely like it for the windoze "start" button. :(


> I just moved into a new apartment -- And im still getting used to which
> light switches control what lights.. Now, if I went over to the light
> switch with a magic-marker, drew a big black arrow on the wall and
> labelled it "Entranceway Light" , drew another arrow to another switch and
> said "Walkway Light"... Sure, it would be helpful to me. I wouldnt have
> any question as to what lightswitch controlled what.. But after I got used
> to it, and didnt need the arrows or the labels anymore, what would I be
> left with, really? ... A gaudy, ugly mess of marker drawings on my wall
> that I would wish I never made.

that's why we're trying to come up with something that will really be useful
beyond showing what it's possible. that's why I opt against ANY app directly
on the panel, except MAYBE an xterm - because no matter which one we choose,
a lot of users will not need it.
the lowest common demoninator(sp?) seems to be to have "system", "apps" and
"games" there. 99% of people will have at least one of each.


-- 
The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken.