Re: [Usability] Default Panel Layout

[Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com>]

NB for everyone on the list: I've already had one of our more
experienced usability people tell me he is sick of arguing about
defaults for panels/menus/etc., so let's try extra hard in this
conversation to keep the signal-noise ratio high- try reducing the
number of 'me toos' and sticking very close to the core issue. No pie
in the sky for now- just what we have and what we can do now. [Not a
specific critique of you, Alan, just that you're the first post in
this thread since I had that conversation.]

On 6/14/05, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, Luis Villa wrote:
> 
> > Subject: Re: [Usability] Default Panel Layout
> 
> > > > >  - We've nautilus and terminal launchers on the panel by default
> > > > >    instead of evo and epiphany
> > > >
> > > > Should we 'fix' that? Certainly we're trying to downplay the terminal..
> > >
> > > I agree. Could you please open a bug about it? :-)
> >
> > Done:
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307626
> >
> > > > >  - The system tray doesn't appear on the either of the default panels
> > > > >    (apparently)
> > > >
> > > > Ditto- this one seems particularly bad, in fact.
> > >
> > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103223
> 
<snip terminal discussion>

I don't think anyone on this list will disagree with removing the
terminal (so please don't AOL Alan's comments, anyone), the
interesting discussion is solely about what to replace them with.

> For what it is worth I like my panel to include Show Desktop and a link to
> my Home directory (and a bunch of other junk not worth mentioning).

Please let's not get into 'this is what I use'; let's either explore
what others are doing (and hence what we should be looking at parity
with) or (if possible) discuss explicit use cases that we're trying to
resolve.

> I notice how in the bug report how the shortcuts are described as
> $WEB_BROWSER.  The shortcuts in each case are set by the distributor to a
> different hardcoded browser rather than say some kind of link to start
> whatever has been set in gnome-default-applications-properties as the
> default $WEB_BROWSER.

What matters is that they provide the user a browser, that's all. I'm
trying to understand the user goals they are meeting, which appears to
be 'mail client', 'web browser', etc.

Luis