Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (95 mails)

[Jim Krehl <jimmyk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> I think it's great that Novell/openSUSE are trying to innovate, the new
> Computer menu and the Control Center look more clean and simple than the
> way it is in standard GNOME. However, I have some problems with how the
> new "Computer" menu tries to improve over the standard menu's of GNOME.
> There is only room for six "Favorite Applications" in the menu, after a
> clean install those are: Firefox, Evolution, Banshee, OpenOffice.org
> Writer, F-Spot and Nautilus. I'd certainly use all of those applications
> frequently (except I'd use Epiphany instead of Firefox) but I'd also use
> Pidgin, X-Chat, gedit and GIMP often, possibly more. That makes for at
> least ten favorite applications for an average user like me.

As already pointed out, the launchers can be added to the main-menu by
accessing it's right-click menu.  They can also be removed from that
menu, as well.  Additionally, launchers can be added by dragging them to
the Computer button in the panel.

> The "RecentApplications" beneath the "Favorite Applications" don't seem useful to
> me.

The are a number of use cases for "Recent Applications", e.g. working on
on project which requires frequent use of an otherwise infrequently used
application.  It can be disabled by editing the GConf key found
at /desktop/gnome/applications/main-menu/lock-down/showable_file_types.

> Concluding, I think the "Application Browser" is a bit messy, because it
> duplicates entries which are already accessible through other menu's.
> So the six "Favorite Applications" inside the "Computer" menu are not
> enough for me or the average user, and the "Application Browser" which
> is used to start non-favorite applications is cluttered with a lot of
> duplicated entries. Besides from that, having to open the "Computer"
> menu, then opening the "Application Browser" and then finally being able
> to start the application you needed to start but for which there is no
> place in the "Favorite Applications" section, takes a great deal longer
> and is less simple than if it would be done with the "Applications" menu
> in standard GNOME. I'm sure Novell invested a lot of time in usability
> research for this, but it simply doesn't cut it for my use case.

It's true that there are some spurious applications lingering in the
application-browser.  This is mainly an issue with .desktop files
sneaking their way into parts of the distribution that they don't
belong.  The new application-browser has highlighted this and they will
be cleaned up.  However, regarding the redundancy with applications that
appear in the main-menu this is the done by design.  The
application-browser isn't merely for application access, it is also for
application management, e.g. adding to / removing from the autostart
menu.  As such, even if an application is already accessible from the
main-menu it should also be accessible in the application-browser in the
case that the user wishes to perform actions on a batch of applications.

Thanks!
Jim Krehl

PS.  Sorry if the way I'm replying to this message messes up the
threading in your viewer, I did not get on this mailing list until
today.


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