Re: [Usability] Foobar Menu Layout

[Mark McLoughlin <mark skynet ie>]

Hey,

On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 04:23, Seth Nickell wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-06-03 at 20:00, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > So,
> > 
> > I always feel a little bit deflated when I see "arbitrary" changes in vendor
> > releases of GNOME. In this case, I'm sure the Ximian foobar menu was changed
> > to be similar to their existing 1.4-based product, and to make up for users
> > not grokking where things should be under Applications or Actions. So, not
> > entirely "arbitrary" in this case, but it would be nice to keep these kinds
> > of things synced...
> > 
> > The GNOME foobar menu layout:
> > 
> >   Applications  Actions
> > 
> >            vs.
> > 
> >   Programs  System  Help
> 
> Probably going to be "Applications  Desktop  Help" based on the current
> bug discussions (which have been dragging on for a while now, but
> hopefully we'll get things resolved and changed for 2.6).

	Yeah, this has been going on a while now ...

	The bugs are:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75312 (Add a Help Menu)
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89874 (s/Actions/Desktop)
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92719 (Add a Preferences Menu)

	I don't have any real concrete opinions on the matter and I'm willing
to go with whatever consensus usability-maint can come up with.

	But some points:

	* I think the "Desktop" term is a little vague, but I can see where the
confusion around "Actions" come from. Desktop would certainly get my
vote over "System" in any case ...

	* I'm not sure whether there is huge value to adding a Help menu. I
think its more a convenient location for vendor marketing than anything
else ... This is prime real estate on your screen yet I don't really see
it containing anything that fits into the "frequent by many" category.

	* Same thing with having a "Desktop Preferences" menu. That takes up
even more space and probably falls into the "Occasional by Many"
category. I agree that it doesn't belong in "Applications". If we do the
s/Actions/Desktop/ thing, perhaps we could move it there ...

	* I've been using the menu bar on my bottom panel in the left hand
corner for quite a while now and I think it works really well. Vendors
seem pretty well split between the "start menu" location and the "Mac
OS" location ... but at least if we were using the same widget in these
locations we would have some sort of commonality between distributions.

	* I too abhore the menu stripe ... its definitely one of those
occasions where the marketing folks through the usability folks out the
window.

Good Luck,
Mark.