Re: [Usability] Detailed menus

[Nadyne Mielke <nmielke acm org>]

At 06:19 AM 8/11/2004, Vidar Braut Haarr wrote:

> That looks really nice! :) However, I don't think it's a very good idea. 
> When you've got a fresh GNOME install, the only things you should really 
> see in the menu are the Generic Names, and they should be descriptive 
> enough not to require a description. And if you then install a secondary 
> application for the same purpose, you are sure to know about it, and so 
> you already know how to distinguish between them.

I don't think that we can assume that the user will know how to distinguish 
them.  A couple of instances where the user might not know:

* Someone else installed the application.  This is certainly common in a 
corporate environment where certain applications come pre-installed on a 
user's machine.  But even at home, on my server, there are two of us who 
might install something, so there are occasionally things that the other 
person installed that I don't know about.  Another example would be a 
computer that's shared across a larger group of people, such as a library 
kiosk.

* The user installed the application some time ago, and hasn't used it in 
awhile, so has forgotten what it is.

I do agree that the extra text could add some clutter to the menu.  But on 
first glance, I think that I like this idea better than I like 
tooltips.  On a short menu, I think the extra text wouldn't be too bad.  I 
share the concern that a couple of others have expressed that it might be 
too much clutter on a long menu.  I'm also somewhat concerned about where 
that text comes from -- I'd hate to have something like this broken if a 
developer for a new application could come in and try to stuff 4 lines of 
descriptive text in there.  But overall (and with some safeguards in place 
to ensure that the descriptions aren't too long), I probably wouldn't mind 
it if it were an option that I could turn on and off.

/nm