Re: one question and one proposal



George <jirka@5z.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 16, 1998 at 11:36:01PM +0200, Tom Vogt wrote:
> > I would like to propose a change in the panel's default structure,
> > especially a move away from the "single start button" philosophy. since it
> > first appeared in windoze 95, it has earned a lot of bad critics from user
> > interface designers, screen designers and simple users.
> 
> gnome doesn't have a sigle start button philosophy ... it's just that
> the default setup has the root menu positioned on the left side .... you

excuse me being unclear there, but that was what I meant - that the default
configuration supports this philosophy. I know that you can cusomize it and
from the screenshots that I have seen it seems that most people using gnome
do move away from this structure themselves.


> used apps and where to put/swallow some useless things like clock or the
> cpu monitor or a cdplayer .... since there is quite a lot of things that
> are to be presented .. it makes sense to put them all in a menu ... and
> where to put the menu ... on the panel ... makes a lot of sense to me
> ....

I do absolutely agree. what bothers me is that the default puts everything
into ONE menu. this is - according to about everything I have read on the
subject - a bad user interface design.

one idea - probably not the best, though - would be to instead divide things
up, according to function, into three menus. call one "panel control" and
put the configuration menus under it, you could probably save a level of
cascading menu if done right this way. call the second one "system" and put
the system-control apps there, again you could probably save a level. call
the second one "applications" and put everything else there.
this way the structure is immediatly more clear to the novice user. in two
of the three cases you will also have reached your goal one step faster. in
addition, the user isn't swamped with entries upon opening a menu. the rule
of thumb is that everything over 10 is way too much and only results in
confusion. I know that this currently is not a problem, but I think we agree
that this is because of the current state of the project and is changing
quickly.

I would like to see the panel rather as a replacement and enhancement of the
afterstep/nextstep wharf/dock. there is a general agreement that nextstep
has one of the best user interfaces ever created, maybe one should try to
copy some of its best points. but that is only my personal opinion, surely
there are better solutions.




--
Mystic Arena PBeM-Game: http://www.lemuria.org/arena/



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