https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=274852 Summary: Merging gnome main menu's 'Documents' and 'Places'-tabs Product: openSUSE 10.3 Version: Alpha 4 Platform: Other OS/Version: Other Status: NEW Severity: Enhancement Priority: P5 - None Component: Usability AssignedTo: bnc-team-screening@forge.provo.novell.com ReportedBy: christian.jaeger@rub.de QAContact: qa@suse.de The 'Documents'-tab displays does use an entire tab to display no more than 6 recently-used documents at the defaults. The 'Places'-tab uses this space to display 8 places that we also find in Nautilus' sidebar. And it even looks more messy than Nautilus' places-sidebar. Why do we need a whole tab to do something that fits into a sidebar? This is not efficient IMHO. As 'Documents' and 'Places' share a very similar semantic value (spatial), I think we could easily merge these two tabs and call it 'Documents', 'Files' or whatever. IMHO it is not so good that clicking on tiles for places opens up a Nautilus-window because Nautilus itself is not the quickest application to launch. The idea is intriguing whether a rudimentary file-browser could be integrated into the main-menu; it could speed up work so much. We would have a new sub-menu. The 'Places'-sidebar from Nautilus would be situated on the left side, highlighting the items would cause the submenu on the right side to change. See attached pictures. As latency already is the BIG problem of main-menu, the file-manager it should actually only be a very basic file-_browser_ that could do _none_ of the fancy things that Nautilus does - perhaps based on code from the gtk-file-chooser? Because network browsing is typically slow, the 'network-servers'-tile is a special case. Clicking on that tile should better spawn an independent file-chooser dialogue or Nautilus. Here are some thoughts for possible guidelines for the design: • The mouse should have to move short ways --> no dead space wanted, the menu should stay small. • The hierarchy of buttons is top-down and left-right: Super buttons in the top-bar, main links above submenu-links and actions, submenu-links left of actions • Information should not be clickable! (because it confuses) --> 'harddrive' and 'network' are reduced to text-status and aren't tiles, anymore • There is three types of click-able objects in the menu: 'super'-objects in the top bar (those aren't tiles), links (those aren't tiles and don't have symbols) and action (are tyled, have symbols) • Clicking on links changes the layout of the main frame, by either changing the whole frame or portions of it (tabs) • Links appear only within the main frame, which they change, in order to make their being connected obvious • Activities are represented by tiles. --> installing software is only an activity, too! • Sub-menus appear as links on the left side of the main-window, their collected activities as tiles on the right side • Use of tabs, consisting of a coloured background, makes it obvious to the eye that they belong to one 'set' of a link. • Sets of activities don't scroll! Use left/right-arrows to 'browse' them instead. • Lists of links do scroll (up/down-arrows) if necessary because we don't want more than one part of the main windows to change • Network-shares are always opened in a new window! • This is an 'action', thus the network-servers-button in the Documents-tab appears as a tile, while the rest of the links don't I hope I make some sense. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.