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

[Diego Moya <turingt gmail com>]

On 21/10/05, Manu Cornet <Manu Cornet gmail com> wrote:
> Aren't these kinds of interfaces (links, table of contents, etc.) a
> little too tricky for quite a simple dialog, after all ?

I was thinking along the lines of using a similar panel for selecting
applications as quick-launchers, and the suggestion to integrate
within the same tool applets and applications for adding them to the
panel.  If this interface managed to handle hundreds of items, it
could even be a next-generation replacement for the Gnome menu.

Current trend in desktop interfaces is to add search capabilities to
the Start menu. This uses a Beagle-like backend, but the interface is
limited to applications and their descriptions (and excluding
documents), thus providing for the task of discovering the
capabilities of the installed application base.


> I mean, I would
> agree if we were searching among hundreds of applets, but here I really
> don't think it is necessary, and I feel it makes the dialog more
> complicated instead of more simple... I guess it would be more suitable
> for Beagle-like software ?

Yes, but then the challenge is making interfaces consistent between
the different search interfaces so that they share as much interaction
& behaviour as possible:

Gnome menu -> search applications for launching now
Add to panel -> search applications or applets for persistent placement in panel
Beagle -> search documents, applications & system configuration options

By speculating how your interface scales, we could set the basis for
integrating those similar-but-not-equal tools, using similar layouts.
The same way we have standard "Load" and "Save" dialogs, we could have
a "Search" component reused through all these tools.