Re: Mockup of overlay layout changes

[coulamac <aigiskos yahoo com>]

--- On Sun, 2/22/09, Johannes Schmid <jhs jsschmid de> wrote:

> From: Johannes Schmid <jhs jsschmid de>
> Subject: Re: Mockup of overlay layout changes
> To: "Sander Dijkhuis" <sander dijkhuis gmail com>
> Cc: gnome-shell-list gnome org
> Date: Sunday, February 22, 2009, 3:02 AM
> Hi!
> 
> Am Sonntag, den 22.02.2009, 04:14 +0100 schrieb Sander
> Dijkhuis:
> > I made a small mockup of a different overlay layout:
> > http://student.science.uva.nl/~sqdh/gs-mockup/
> > It is mostly a change of positioning, and a different
> way of switching between
> > the different overlay views.  Of couse only code can
> tell whether this works
> > better than the current design, but I thought it would
> be fun and maybe even
> > useful to create this mockup first.
> 
> These markups are really nice. I like the removal of the
> "most used
> applications", too, because I already find this quite
> annoying on
> Windows. The applications menu looks also very nice.
> 
> Regards,
> Johannes
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I respectfully disagree regarding the "most used applications."  From my unscientific observation of desktop use patterns, most users use only a handful of applications on any regular basis.  From the live.gnome.org page, I understand that one of the proposed features of the new shell is that there will be no launchers on the top panel.[0]  So, if there are no launchers on the panel and the Activities menu doesn't keep track of regularly used applications, then if a user wants to start one of her regularly used applications, she will have to click the activities button, remember which category the application fits into, click that category, then click the correct application.  I would find that very annoying.

If you have a launcher on the panel, you open the application with one click.  (This assumes, of course, that you can figure out how to create a launcher.)[1][2]  If you have recently used applications, you open the application in two clicks (one to click on the Activities button; one to click on the correct recently-used application).  It seems unfortunate to force a user to use three clicks. Even two clicks is less than optimal. (By the way, if I'm misunderstanding how the mock-up works, I apologize in advance).

Anyway, this is my $0.02.

~Andrew

[0] This is a little off-topic, but how is all the space between the Activities button and the user button going to be used?  It seems that there is a lot of wasted space there when screen real estate is at a premium.

[1] Windows uses the launcher on their panel-- which again assumes the user can figure out how to create a launcher.  Still, the user can open the application with one click and without opening any menus.

[2] OSX automatically creates a launcher (of sorts) on the Dock.  This has a lot going for it, since it happens without special user input.  On the other hand, it falls into the tool-centered desktop paradigm, instead of a document-centered or task-centered paradigm.

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