Re: Main Menu mockup

[Matthew McGowan <matthew joseph mcgowan gmail com>]

> If the five different menus are already cluttered, then you're not 
> going to make something less cluttered by just munging them all 
> together. On the other hand, if it's possible to simplify each of them 
> enough that munging them together works, then it should also be 
> possible to usefully simplify them without munging them together at 
> all, saving the user a click or two every time.

You are right.  But at the moment in the Gnome shell a user could 
potentially have deskbar running as an applet, pidgin with its own list 
and status listings, and the 'Applications', 'Places', 'System' menus, 
and then there are the sub-menus for each category of apps etc.  So in 
this situation we have a large distance between applets and allot of 
screen real estate used up. Is there much lost usability-wise if these 
were merged.  I think it makes some sense to consolidate certain core 
functions into one location (search/places/apps/settings)?

Also some things are used with lower frequency, so the fact they are 
lumped with a menu would have less impact.  IMHO it makes sense for the 
'System' menu to be merged into some other menu.  Ideally a user should 
not be having to go to the Systems menu all that often.


Regards,
Matt