Re: extra menus on panel

["Dan Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

>Adding extra folders by default to demonstrate that it's possible is
>akin to arguing that we do it because we can.  Leave the customisation
>to the user.
>
>Am I making sense?


You're making sense.  In fact, I had agreed with this statement before.  But
then I realized that if it's not obvious to a user how to do something, and
if it's not brain-dead easy, it just won't get done.

I'm no newbie user on windows.  *MY* desktop is a mess, and my start menu is
a disaster.  Obvious nature and utter simplicity are really necessary, even
for the expert level users.

One of the nice touches about having menus residing on the panel, even for
someone like me who *hates* the idea of menus residing on the panel, is that
it should be alot easier to configure the gnomeprint's submenu.  Simply add
the folder to the panel, be it by drag and drop or some kind of
aesthetically pleasing version of the checkbox paneler or something I
haven't even thought of yet.

The panel thus recieves the additional role of folderholder :-).

Bowie was saying that it's probably a bad thing to look at the panel as the
totality of GNOME.  To this, I must agree, but not to the extent that I
think Bowie intended.  What I think the key thing to realize about the panel
is that it does not(or should not) get occluded.  An occluded window is, for
the most part, a window that cannot deliver the totality of its information
and is in fact often *useless* until it is brought higher up.  (Of course,
it's *VERY* easy to bring back up because the user remembers EXACTLY where
it was left)  The nice thing about a panel is that it's the perfect place to
put all the little things that are constantly needed yet are a pain in the
ass to continually hunt for.  (ex:  Where'd that CD player window go, this
track stinks)

I don't think we should leave things out of the panel because we might be
overfilling it, nor just "because we can".  Our basis for excluding things
from the panel should only be--does it confuse and slow the user?
Conversely, our basis for including things from the panel should only
be--does it explain to and speed up the user?

Having at least one folder available, and having the interface somehow state
how that folder was *made* available, will speed up the user interface
because it will reduce the user's desire to place applications on the
desktop.  What should please you, Dion, is that by making it easy to see how
the folder was added, it's also made easy to see how an app is subtracted.