Re: [Fwd: Re: [gnome-love] start-menu]

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Sat, 2003-05-03 at 23:04, Darryl Rees wrote:
> Thijs, Norman,
> what is wrong with the design of the gnome start menu? Care to be a bit 
> more specific?
>
> Norman, what is a side image?

Take a look at teh KDE 3 screenshots - there's a thin little "banner"
along the side of the menu.  It makes the menu feel a lot more
professional; it is, basically, eye candy.  I personally think it makes
the main menu feel "haevier", more important - which I think is good,
but that's just me.  ~,^

> Surely you guys are not suggesting something like the monstrosity in 
> Windows XP.
> It's so hard to find stuff in that damn thing.

Something "like" as is being more than just a list of apps, perhaps. 
Exactly the same layout as the WinXP one... dear gods no.  ~,^

Just a few simple things could be done to make it a bit easier, tho. 
For example, the Network Servers/Help/etc. all "disappear", as you don't
really notice them - you are just looking at a list of topics.  Even a
simple separator between topics and actions on the top-level menu would
be nice.

Other things, like Preferences (and System Settings on RH) should be
split out - yes, technically, they are applications, but that's not how
a user sees it - they should be split out from the list of sections for
apps that perform tasks, into a separate
options/preferences/settings/whatever space.  It's just organization,
basically.

Stuff like recently used apps or most used apps... those have to be done
right, and should probably use some study from the usability@ folks. 
Recent apps seems rather useless to me, and most commonly used or
favorites would need to have a decent heuristic for picking the entries
to display.  (especially for when users' work habits change)

> Cheers,
> Darryl.
>
>
> Norman Jonas wrote:
>
> > Thijs Thiessens schrieb:
> >
> > > I would like to start a new project called GKickOff. It's about the
> > > design of the gnome Start Menu. I would like to develop a series of
> > > guidlines which describes a good startmenu. To start I should conduct
> > > some polls perhaps to investigate what people really would like to see
> > > in their. If I have enough information, I could actually build one,
> > > perhaps as a module, which can be plugged in. I could perhaps develop
> > > more start menu's each with it's own special set of features. I think of
> > > it not only being a good add on to the theming concept, but it also
> > > provides very usefull functionality. Because currently, the Gnome Start
> > > Menu, is just an underestimated and bad designed part of Gnome.
> > >
> > > Is this a good idea? Is their already such a project? (I could not find
> > > any though..) If their isn't already a project for this, are their other
> > > people willing to help?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Thijs
> > I absolutly agree with you. A better start menu with at least a side 
> > image possible would improve GNOME's competitive power. And there are 
> > certainly other users that would agree, even though there will be some 
> > that will complain, too. IMHO such a start menue should be flexible 
> > enough to provide a small and simple menue as well as an graphic 
> > intense impressing one. Furthermore it should fit into the GNOME 
> > codebase (=C) so that it could possibly be included into GNOME.
> >
> > A similar discussion has taken place here 
> > http://www.themedepot.org/itemdetail.php4?id=364 some time ago and 
> > there are already some thoughts of people.
> >
> >
> >
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> > gnome-love gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-love
>
>
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-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.