Re: Location of Desktop Preferences menu (was Reducing the number of special uris in gnome)

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

"Eugene O'Connor" <eugene oconnor sun com> writes:
> Here's a suggestion:
> 
> Replace
> 
> Applications               Actions
> ============               =======
> Accessories >              Run Program...
> Desktop Preferences >      Search for Files...
> :                          Take a Screenshot...
> :                          -----------------
> :                          Lock Display
> :                          Log Out
> 
> with
> 
> Applications               Desktop
> ============               =======
> Accessories >              Run Program...
> :                          Search for Files...
> :                          Take a Screenshot...
> :                          -----------------
> :                          Lock Display
> :                          Log Out
> :                          -----------------
> :                          Preferences > 
> 
> Alternatively, Preferences could be the first item in the Desktop menu.
> I think Desktop is slightly better as a menu name here that Actions. All
> menu items can be considered to be actions. The items in the menu
> perform desktop-level actions, especially, Log Out (of the desktop).
> Using Desktop as the menu name also enables us to shorten Desktop
> Preferences to Preferences. 
> 

I'm worried that users don't really know what "the desktop" is. I bet
they think it's the desktop background.

In my experience people can't actually explain what GNOME/KDE
_contain_, in any detail. They couldn't tell you which things on their
screen are part of "the desktop" and which things are applications or
something else.

I guess you'd need user testing to settle the issue, but in general
that's my gut feeling, that "the desktop" doesn't mean much. Certainly
seems like an implementation detail to me, to draw a line around some
subset of software and call it "desktop"

Havoc