Re: [Usability]GNOME main menu and panel

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

On Thu, 2003-01-16 at 09:15, Alan Horkan wrote:
> 
> 2 Panels?
> 
> > Of course If i had it my way we would rip off the mac and put the menus
> > at the top of the screen, but that just isn't in the cards. Sorry for
> 
> gtk 1.x had panel at the bottom.
> getting rid of it would have annoyed people like me.
> 
> other people think it is a better idea to have the panel at the top.
> 
> I strongly suspect (but i am only guessing) that having the two panels
> was a less than ideal
> compromise.
> It has the advantage of showing users what is available, although I
> suspect most users pretty quickly turn one of them off.

Thus far my 6-month after surveys (6 mo. after having a GNOME desktop,
"switching" (usually complementing, actually) from Windows or MacOS) are
showing most people sticking with the two panel layout. Not a big pool
of people right now (5), but thinking of most of the people I know,
probably more than half of them use a two panel layout.

As far as a more theoretic defense...

1) The space is fairly minimal on a system with equal to or more than
1024x768

2) It gives a lot of room to the window list, which is particularly nice
for people who don't use workspaces (which many of these people are
not). I have noticed Windows users often get very cramped, and sometimes
shut applications just to get more space.

3) It provides a nice conceptual separation between window management
tasks, and "other things". But this point's mostly just us wanking off
:-)

-Seth