On Tue, Mar 14, 2006 at 01:43:13PM +1300, Glynn Foster wrote: > On Mon, 2006-03-13 at 14:10 -0800, Frank Ludolph wrote: > > Calum, > > > > Like Sharon I also hate not knowing what web browser, mail app, word > > processor, pdf viewer, etc. will be run from the launch menu. But then I > > don't care to know the name of the on-screen keyboard app or other such > > utilities. Given in that one case I want to know and that in the other > > case I don't, and that I would learn most of the ones I care about > > within a few uses, I wouldn't want choice 1. > > FWIW, and I'm not qualified to speak other than my personal preference, > I quite like this approach. Identify the applications with major brand > awareness, and promote those to 'Name Function' eg. Firefox Web Browser, > Adobe Reader. All the rest get generic names.
I mostly agree. Brand awareness is an important consideration. The nature of the application is another. Something like a calculator is stateless. If I do a lot of computations, I may eventually develop a preference for a particular implementation. But if I'm looking though a menu for a calculator, I couldn't care less what it's name is. For casual use, calculators and other stateless applications are interchangeable. Something like (to pick my favorite example) the "Image Organizer" requires an investment on the part of the user. Over time I will be putting a lot of effort into organizing my photos using this tool. This will result in accumulated state which is valuable to me, and is (I assume) only useful with the specific application. Even if gThumb is the least known application in the industry, its identity will be very important to me the second time I need to use it. The corollary to this is that if any application which will be entrusted with large amounts of valuable state doesn't have an indentity to begin with, I probably won't use it. I require a certain amount of assurance that my efforts won't be wasted, but a generic name indicates (whether it is true or not) that the provider of the environment isn't confident in the identity of the tool. Simply put, generic names and non-interchangeable components seem incompatible. Dave
