Re: [Usability] Detailed menus

[Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>]

Am Mittwoch, den 11.08.2004, 12:31 +0100 schrieb Iain *:
> I took another deep breath and dived back into the infamous
> gnome-panel/menu.c and came up with this
> http://marlin.sf.net/detailed-menu.png
> 
> I showed a similar copy to some people on IRC and mark suggested I
> send it here to get some of you guys to comment on the usability or
> lack thereof. My original idea was to have the application name and
> then the Generic name as the secondary text, eg
> 
> Epiphany
> (Web Browser)

I've managed to build a sample application that does something else: It
groups menu entries by generic name, i.e. Internet->Web Browser-
>Epiphany|Galeon. Unfortunately it means that you've got to read the
whole folder before being able to decide how the menu layout looks. I've
used hash tables, and if their size is > 1, submenus are built.
I'm sure this will work with the panel as well.
Is it worth playing around with it?

> Mark's thinking was that it would help first timers find applications
> they want rather than using the tooltips, and I think that lowering
> the intensity of the secondary text makes the menu less cluttered
> looking, but I can understand the usability concerns for this.

Indeed, while I think your proposal is nice in theory, because it tries
to reduce the user's lack of application-specific information, it fails
in practice because it *heavily* clutters the menu. I can't really only
grep the bold names without paying attention to the grey labels as well,
which distracts me.

regs,
 Chris