Hi Jeroen - The usability group gets a lot of suggestions from a lot of people about things they don't like. The panel and the GNOME Menu are definitely amongst the most common (throw in Metacity and that's about 90% of them). GNOME's purpose is not to emulate Windows, nor is it to emulate MacOS, nor is it to emulate any other OS. We don't choose not to align ourselves with Windows on any issue because it's Windows; we choose to do what we feel and what our research indicates is the best user experience for our users. > I think there should be a survey about what > people(users) like more. Such a survey is a simplified form of a usability study, which is really the only real argument you can give. Please feel free to try to perform a documented, unbiased usability study as to what behaviors users find the easiest, most intuitive, and convenient. Such a study should necessarily include prior experience with other graphical environments. Likely you would find that users whose experience consists primarily of MacOS will prefer the panel at the top of the screen. Windows users will likely align themselves with you. Furthermore, if this issue is significant enough to you, I would encourage you to patronize distributions of the GNOME desktop that have default configurations that suit you the best. RedHat's 8.0 and Phoebe releases default with the panel at the bottom of the screen as you would like. Havoc will have to forgive me if I misstate this, but the location of the panel and menu is something on which the opinions of users will greatly differ. A default setting must exist. And where merely a plurality, not a majority, of users will differ in their preferences, we try to make reconfiguration of these defaults as easy and flexible as possible. This is why you will find a plethora of panel and menu configuration options, because no majority of users or developers agree there is a "best" way to configure the panel and menu. Thank you for your input on the subject, and for your aid in translations. If you can present a usability study that links a greatest comfortability with a lone panel at the bottom of the screen that is not dependent on prior experience with Windows, I'm sure the usability group and the GNOME project would be very interested to read that study. I know I would. -jag > > -- > --------------------------------------------------------- > Joshua Adam Ginsberg Cellphone: 970.749.8530 > Rice University '02 Email: joshg myrealbox com > St. Mark's School of Texas '98 > -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- > "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a > little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor > safety." - Benjamin Franklin > ---------------------------------------------------------
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