Il giorno sab, 05/05/2007 alle 23.50 +0200, Christian Jäger ha scritto:
Mockups: http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/7501/cleangnomemainmenumockull6.png http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/1028/appbrowsermockupzj3.png http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/6744/controlcentermockupxw7.png
1. Unneccessary space-stealers
How many times do we really need to lock the screen manually? Not too often, as it happens automatically after a few minutes. So skip that menu-entry.
Hello Christian, this is only true if you have the automatic screen lock turned on, which actually is the default setting in GNOME, but some users like turn off. So the lock screen command is a fast shortcut which eliminates the need to add the "lock screen" applet to the panel :-)
Does the entry-field for the search-menu have to cover the whole length of the menu? Certainly not!
I tend to agree. It has to be long enough to contain an average word or two.
2. Clever re-grouping of buttons
How many times do we want to install software when we open the menu? Not too often. We want to do it mostly when we realize that an application we need is not installed. So put the 'install software'-button next to the 'More...'-button in the menu/the app-browser, where the user will need it.
Hmm. Maybe it's functional (I'm not convinced) but it looks terrible. Moreover I would love to see that More... disappear and be replaced by an arrow which opens the full menu (XP style, to be clear) and not the application browser.
Do we really need to know whether the machine is connected to the Net everytime we open the menu? And also, how much space there is on the HD? I think not. Also, this replicates data we should be shown in the gnome-panel (network-manager, D-Bus low-space warning). In the end, we would look for system-information somewhere where we can do other system-maintenance, also. So, put it into an inline control-center (see mockup).
Yes! The "inline" control center, which actually is a tab for the control center features seems a good idea to me. It gives faster access to the configuration tools
This leaves us with few, but important menu items on the right-hand bar: 'Help' and 'Logout'.
As shrinking the 'Search'-menu has gained us space, and as especially the 'Logout'-button is very important, one could and should put them into the top-bar of the menu IMHO; next to the search-field.
I feel that splitting the menu vertically in two parts make it cleaner. But it's probably just a question of habits.
Below that, as in the 0.9x-version there is 'Applications', 'Documents' and 'Places', and it now has gained a 'System'-entry which shows the new inline control-center and some system-info.
System info in the third mockup are definetly too small to be read!
The active entry ('Applications' respectively 'System' in these mockups) should be highlighted in blue, but, hey, I'm no good with the Gimp; sorry. Please also excuse the mixture of German and English in the mockups.
Well, this is how the mockups' design got together.
Now for the functioning of an inline application-browser and control-center that I hope to see someday. :)
The search-button could search the for the active area (applications, documents... you could also regard e-mail as documents) while typing and only if the user hits the return-key the beagle-search interface could come up.
This sounds interesting! I agree.
BTW, the Big Board developers have come up with an idea worth stealing: installation suggestions (http://clarkbw.net/blog/2007/05/04/bullish-on-finding-new-applications/). For example if you search for 'presentation' and don't have presentation-software installed, it would suggest OpenOffice as a recommended install. That would be some idea for future use. It would be nice to have 'suggstions' for categories,too. Say, you browse the 'Internet'-category; there's two lines with place for 3 applications-icons each. Now, say, you'd only have 4 applications installedd, so the otherwise 'empty' spaces in line 2 would be filled by two suggested installations.
The suggestions would help new users a lot. Not knowing the name of applications is one of the big problems for newbies. Regards, A. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org