Re: Mockup/Design for Browsing of Applications

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Wed, 2009-12-30 at 13:19 -0600, Apoorva Sharma wrote:
> After following the discussion in "All Gnome Shell Developers," I had
> an idea to solve some of the problems that were discussed - namely,
> the problems concerning the application menu.

Hey, thanks for working on this and coming up with the mockup!

> When looking at the current application menu, one can see that it is
> slow and just a hassle to use. Yet, for non-advanced users, this is
> the only easy method available for finding an application for a
> certain task.

The current application menu is pretty much just a place holder. We used
to have a category-based view, but since we didn't want to go that way
long term, and it was going to be a pain to port it to the CSS
infrastructure, Colin just dropped the categories and left a vertical
scrolling list.

You can see a rough plan for the future under "All Applications" in the
mockup. The basic idea is a grid that expands to take up as much of the
screen as necessary.

Questions I might have about that design are:

 - Is it going to work OK on a typical Linux system where the user
   may have lots of apps installed that they have no idea what they
   do? Do we need some way of segregating off "developer tools"
   or other categories that might clutter the screen with end-user
   irrelevant applications.

 - Is it obvious to use the main search to refine the set of
   applications if you can't find what you are looking for? Do we
   need a duplicate search entry embedded in the grid?

 - Is there some sort of hover that shows more about the application?
   The text says
 
   "It should not be necessary to provide a text description for the
   application in the default view since the applications should be
   either be known to the user or have names and icons that suggest
   their function."

   But what if that fails? Does the user have to launch the app?

Those (and lots of other questions) will likely be explored once we
get into the implementation. Catch Jon (mccann) or Colin (walters)
on IRC if you want to help further refine that design.

[...]
> 
> AppMenuMockup.png is a mockup that sorts the apps, and makes them
> easier to find. It works very much like the KDE4 Kickoff launcher, so
> the user can either click the category he/she wants, or just hover
> over it for a second. The lists could scroll, just like the current
> app list.

In general, we're not to thrilled by categories. If the user can't
successfully guess the category, then the process of searching through
all the categories for the right app will be slow and tedious.

And it's often not possible to guess categories.

In the current GNOME menu, categories also serve the function of
"remembered paths" - they facilitate muscle memory for where a
frequently launched application is. But we don't want the "all
applications" view to be a primary way of launching applications. If you
launch an application frequently, we want it to be in your favorites
well.

- Owen