Re: [Usability] A New Start Menu Design, which resemble windows

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 22 Oct 2008, at 03:36, Long Gao wrote:

> The original Gnome start menu have three menu items, and I always  
> found
> myself puzzled of thinking which menu to click when I want to do  
> something.
> I thought it not so convenient as windows start menu.
>
> Here I have implemented a new start menu by modifying gnome-panel  
> source. It
> uses gtk-image-menu-item widget, and is in fact a new window. It has  
> all the
> gnome menu functions, except that the menu items are rearranged.  I  
> upload
> some screenshots of it, and I want to know whether you would like it.

Functionally, this isn't really much different from the existing Main  
Menu applet, especially if you add the quicklaunch patch[1] that gives  
you the ability to add frequently used apps to the top of the menu: <http://www.gnome.org/~calum/screenies/launch-menu.png 
>

It would certainly be interesting to find out if users found your more  
compact, 'three pane' layout easier to use than a single menu, though.

Cheeri,
Calum.

[1] <http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=130733>

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems