usability bug report

[sungod <sungod atdot org>]

after a few hours of hacking away trying to regain some semblance of
stability to my desktop after installing most of the 0.99 snapshot, i
have a beginning bug report for the application designers to fix. on a
quick tour through the new gnome menu, here's a quick summary of what i
found:

i was unable to run the following applications:
esd volume meter
gnomecard (barely)

the following applications need to have underlined alt-key shortcuts in
the menus:
gnomecard
text file viewer
gnome search tool
user listing
gnome help browser

other menubar evils:
gnome calculator: three menus, with one menu choice each. silly to hide
these in a menu, much less three individual menus.
gnome color browser: two menus, one choice each.
gnome search tool: two menus, one choice each, with menus located at
opposite ends of the menu bar.
user listing: again, help on right side of menu bar. two of three menus
have one choice each.
ghex has a "file" menu and a "files" menu. bad design. "files" menu can
(and is by default) empty. even worse design.
gnumeric has three menus with one choice each. "view" and "format" only
exist to take the user to a dialog box.
gmix: two menus, one choice each.

remarks about general usability:

gnome-terminal: can't turn menu bar on once it's turned off.
menu config: general usability nightmare. more about that later. :)
gmc: icons are stuck in front of netscape and annoying as hell.
both the menu bar and tool bar widgets always run off the edge of any
window resized too small to fit all the choices. even a simple
scrolly-arrow-on-the-left-side hack is better than this.
control center behavior is unclear. nextstep, netscape, and mac os
present three different ways to do the same thing which are much better
designed; let's grab the best features from those.
several applications consist only of a few (or even a single) notebook
tab. these seem to be floating, homeless capplets in search of an
identity, a philosophy, or perhaps just a hot meal and place to sleep.
let's come up with a better approach to organizing these.

and the biggest user interface design crime ever:

you broke minesweeper and mah jongg! how could you! the audacity! back
to work this instant, coders!

;)

merry christmas, everyone. you've done a fine job getting these
libraries to code freeze. sit back, have some spiked eggnog and pat
yourselves on the back. this is gonna be a great desktop environment by
the time we get done with it.

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