Re: [Usability] New "Add to panel" dialog

[Eric Larson <elarson novell com>]

Hi, 

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 18:31 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, Manu Cornet wrote:
> 
> > Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 00:35:51 +0200
> > From: Manu Cornet <Manu Cornet GMail com>
> > To: usability gnome org
> > Subject: [Usability] New "Add to panel" dialog
> >
> >
> > Hi !
> >
> > I have been working on a new version of the "add to panel" dialog, for
> > the Ubuntu distro. This dialog is already available by default in the
> > new Ubuntu "Breezy Badger" version.
> 
> Calum Benson commented on this before and I will repeat my comments at
> from the time.  Both the current dialog and new dialog you are proposing
> are trying to deal with the problem of large collection of applets and I
> feel neither succeed with this very well.  Unless the number of applets
> can be kept much much smaller I'm a whole lot happier with the using menus
> and submenus as older versions of Gnome used to do.
> 
> I can certainly agree there is a problem here but I dont think any of the
> proposed solutions have been substantially better and none of them
> do very well if you allow a large set of applets.
> 
> Six of one, half dozen of the other.
> 
> Sincerely

One aspect to consider is not necessarily the applet selector in itself,
but rather the larger picture of selection throughout the desktop. It is
helpful if many tools used a similar interface for similar general
actions. The applet selector may not make as much sense in itself, but
if it is mimicking some other interface (ie A similar control center,
Search tool like the holmes mock ups), then things become more clear by
default. As technology continues to progress, there will be more and
more areas where the interface will deal more with massive amounts of
data than were a widget goes. The applet selector reveals this type of
issue and I think this kind of interface is actually very forward
thinking when looked at from the standpoint of information management. 

Eric