On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Owen Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-12-30 at 13:19 -0600, Apoorva Sharma wrote: > > After following the discussion in "All Gnome Shell Developers," I had > > an idea to solve some of the problems that were discussed - namely, > > the problems concerning the application menu. > > Hey, thanks for working on this and coming up with the mockup! > > > When looking at the current application menu, one can see that it is > > slow and just a hassle to use. Yet, for non-advanced users, this is > > the only easy method available for finding an application for a > > certain task. > > The current application menu is pretty much just a place holder. We used > to have a category-based view, but since we didn't want to go that way > long term, and it was going to be a pain to port it to the CSS > infrastructure, Colin just dropped the categories and left a vertical > scrolling list. > Yeah I complained about the current application menu as being too slow and cumbersome when trying to find applications that aren't recently used. For some reason the apps I use don't show up there and I get some list that I never use like Evolution. I was going to write something about the port to CSS being difficult but I don't know enough of the underlying technology to say anything difficult. But I guess I find it kind of worrisome if people want to write something against gnome-shell that might make it difficult to write neat utils. Anyways, I might go back to this topic when I learn more about the internals. > You can see a rough plan for the future under "All Applications" in the > mockup. The basic idea is a grid that expands to take up as much of the > screen as necessary. > > I think it will depend on the size of the icons/letters. When I use Boxee it has a similar presentation of apps and I generally don't have a problem unless the position changes. If the positions remain static then that's great. Maybe make it user arrangeable if that is possible. > Questions I might have about that design are: > > - Is it going to work OK on a typical Linux system where the user > may have lots of apps installed that they have no idea what they > do? Do we need some way of segregating off "developer tools" > or other categories that might clutter the screen with end-user > irrelevant applications. > Ugh, kind of tough without lots of user testing. > - Is it obvious to use the main search to refine the set of > applications if you can't find what you are looking for? Do we > need a duplicate search entry embedded in the grid? > Ugh more user testing. :-) My gut reaction is that there should be only one search. I would prefer it to be like spotlight on OSX or dashboard from long ago? > - Is there some sort of hover that shows more about the application? > The text says > Is that something we can control? I would think that is a style guide issue. We expect all good apps to have this. If they don't then it is the app at fault. > > But what if that fails? Does the user have to launch the app? > > Good as any other action I would think. > In general, we're not to thrilled by categories. If the user can't > successfully guess the category, then the process of searching through > all the categories for the right app will be slow and tedious. > I've ran into this before and I usually fault app developers for putting it in a strange place. For instance, playonlinux installs in the game section even though it doesn't strictly do games. I keep thinking it would be other some other application area. Some of that is user expectation which could lead them astray. For me I find it easier to use as it narrows my search but I do fall victim to category expectation. I have no idea how to resolve that other than more accurate area on where to put it or make categories broader. The broader the better. I still consider it better than all in one place which puts a whole lot of information all at once. > And it's often not possible to guess categories. > > In the current GNOME menu, categories also serve the function of > "remembered paths" - they facilitate muscle memory for where a > frequently launched application is. But we don't want the "all > applications" view to be a primary way of launching applications. If you > launch an application frequently, we want it to be in your favorites > well. > > I'm willing to test that. Currently it doesn't seem to behave that way with gnome-shell as of two days ago. sri
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