Re: Menus

["Khimenko Victor" <gnome-gui khim sch57 msk ru>]

6-Nov-98 09:33 you wrote:
> I recall a statistic from a gui design talk a few years
> ago that showed that less than 2% of the computer using
> population uses customizable toolbars and menus.

May be.

> I believe the term was "stunt programming: Programmers
> think it's cool, but no-one else uses it."

But why ? I'm pretty sure that this is since there are no easy way to spread
your customization! Why waste huge amount of time to fine-tune all menus and
toolbars if you'll be unable to use this layout next year in next version of
MS Developer Studio or in next version of MS Word or even at the same comp
after MS Windows reinstallation ? And of course you could not just sent your
"great" layout to your friend: in case of MS Word this will vanish all his(her)
macroses in Normal.dot ! IMO this will have a lot of sence if you'll have
tools to rearrange items (and yes this tools will be used by few per cents of
users at most) and tools to just select layout ! Users will have a choice.
That is my points: themeable menus (in one theme there are will be one menu for
all applications at the top of screen, in other theme -- at the top of window,
for example) will be used more then 2% of users while new themes will be created
by less amount of users (may be only few users) and (here is other point)
it's far more easily to create new layout via "point-and-click" then via
editing of source code (some sophisticated changes will require changes in
source code, of course)...

P.S. Why not force users to use enlightenment after all ? Why GNOME supports
(at least in theory) different WM ? Just to give users a choice ! Why users
could choose window decorations (not so important thing after all) but not
menu/toolbar layout ? What is used more often: application menu and toolbars
or menus and buttons on window frame (provided by WMs) ? BTW costomizable
dialog boxes will be just great as well but IMO such thing almost impossible
to do without changes in source code anyway (unlike menus and toolbars
customization). Apart from scrollbars or buttons "look and feel" (this is
handled by GTK+ themes anyway).