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

[Eric Larson <elarson novell com>]

Hello, 

On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 16:32 +0200, Diego Moya wrote:
> 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.

I just want to second this. I stated this earlier on the list but I am
wondering if my mail was sent. I think this makes a ton of sense. Users
are only becoming more and more exposed to massive amounts of data so
new techniques are being developed to handle this. Search is quickly
becoming key and contextual search has been found to be effective means
of implementing it. Creating a standard interface for selection and
searching makes this even more helpful to user (especially considering
unknown interface needs). 

One can argue that this is overkill for the applet selection. This makes
sense in the respect that applets are not why you use a computer. One
could even argue that applets are simply bug fixes for overall desktop
issues, but it is pointless to debate this sort of thing. I think what
is more important is learning how to help users digest and aggregate
massive amounts of data in a consistent means so when new types of data
must be analyzed, there is already an adopted standard to adhere to. 

Eric