Re: All GNOME Shell Developers.

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall gmail com>]

On Sat, 2009-12-19 at 12:44 +0530, mac_v wrote:
...
> But saying that the user needs to use the keyboard to do an action
> quicker is not very ideal.
> 
> Both the keyboard-only and mouse-only users have to be able to do the
> same action in the easiest/quickest possible way. And forcing either
> user to change their behavior because the keyboard/mouse offers a
> quicker alternative isnt very ideal.
> 
> IMO , categories were much more easier than scrolling through the whole
> list of apps.

Someone a while back (I’m sorry, I forget who; lots of messages!)
mentioned that the favourites section and the search box are expected
for people who know what they are looking for, while the application
browser is for discovering new stuff. To me, that makes some sense, so
it would be nice to have the application browser designed in a way that
complements discovering new apps. A design which involves an enormous
one-dimensional list and a scrollbar[1] will not work to that end. It
should be quick to browse, informative, bright and cheerful if possible.
The current design is pretty solid with the description for each app
being displayed clearly.

Vaguely related: that browse menu is not discoverable. Nobody is going
to expect to click an arrow to the side of a title when it is so tiny
and lacks any prelight. The entire header should act as a clickable area
and the arrow should light up when the header is being hovered over.

On another note, I find it a bit interesting that the poster who
identified the above didn't consider the SEARCH box a tool for
discovering new things. Looking at it, I can see why; it just isn't a
very sophisticated search tool. Can’t we add an X-Keywords key to the
desktop entry spec?
And — sorry, I forget: is there a plan to integrate with Tracker for
that? Searching is tricky business, with lots of handy techniques
available like finding the root of the queries, so “images” becomes
“image”.


[1] On the topic of scrollbars, here is something completely unrelated
to the discussion: I cry a little bit inside whenever I see a complex
GUI widget in the shell which duplicates functionality in GTK+. These
should be avoided wherever possible unless they are actually being done
with GTK+. Otherwise, there will be a lot of ugly delta between the UI
conventions of the shell and the UI conventions of the rest of the
desktop. It may not confuse us, but it could be a hindrance for people
getting used to Gnome and discovering its conventions.
As is, for example, you cannot right click + drag or middle click + drag
a scroll bar, and clicking in the scroll trough performs an arguably
nicer but definitely inconsistent action.



Thanks
Dylan McCall