Re: [Usability] desktop entry names, generic?

[John Kodis <john kodis org>]

On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 11:17:50AM -0400, Damian Haase wrote:

> Another thing to consider is scanability. If there are four Music
> Players installed (granted, maybe not a common case), and they all
> follow the format "_____ Music Player" with the GNOME default leaving
> off the "_____", then the menu would look something like this:
> 
>   Another Music Player
>   Gary's Music Player
>   Music Player
>   Slick Music Player
> 
> The issue I see here is that by asking all GNOME app developers to
> follow the "____ Music Player" format, the only distiguishing
> characteristic in a list of like items is the "____", and the GNOME
> default, lacking that distinguishing characteristic, may get lost in
> the noise.
> 
> There may be other ways to allow an application to display its
> "primary" status than by altering the menu name. Perhaps some visual
> distinction, such as a highlight color, or even bold text. Maybe
> position in the list.

Putting "Music Player" first in the list would do it, although I'd
prefer just supplying a distinguishing name for each.

There was also a proposal at one time to solve this sort of problem by
having the menu at the level above this one show "Music Player >".
Clicking on this would start the default music player, but when the
user clicked on/hovered over the little arrow on the right hand side,
a submenu with Another, Slick, and Gary's Music Players would appear.
That seemed like an elegant, intuitive, and flexible solution to me,
but the idea never went anywhere for reasons that I no longer recall.

-- John Kodis.