Hello, I'd like to bring up once again the perhaps most controversial issue in openSUSE's rendition of GNOME: its way of browsing/starting applications. Regular complaints about the application-browser are: 1) it is not GNOME standard 2) application-browser start-up time is too long 3) finding applications in app-browser is cumbersome There's not much to say about 1); many things about openSUSE are far from Vanilla, and be that good or not, it won't change. 2) is an issue that has been 'taken care of' several times AFAIK but none of the attempts have really resolved the issue. The application-browser can still take anything up to a minute on my 1.7 Ghz, 512 MB RAM computer to start (and by this I don't mean first-time startup) when I'm running other applications. What, if anything, else could be done to resolve this issue, apart from simply ditching the app-browser as a concept? 3) is a valid complaint IMHO, last brought up in this review: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138886-c,suse/article.html Quote: "if you're looking for a spreadsheet, for example, you must first scroll through almost a full page of games." The reviewer obviously didn't click the categories on the left window pane but simply scrolled down the menu from top to bottom in order to find the application she was looking for. Can we expect users to do otherwise; even to enter a search-term in the search-box on the top-left corner? I think not. Also there is a lack of sub-categories A possible solution comes from ASUS' new customized Xandros-desktop for their Eee-PC; they use a full-screen, tabbed 'application-browser' of sorts: http://www.eeeuser.com/2007/10/29/eee-pc-xandros-linux-review/ The decision to make the GUI full-screen-size and always visible might well be attributed to the minuscule size of the device's screen (7"). Still the screen-real-estate is small, so it uses two ways to very effectively reduce the number of applications that are immediately visible: -tabs -icons that lead to a deeper-level hierarchy I think the positive effect on usability is just remarkable. Please test it using this 'interactive' demo: http://honeypothack.com/eee/internet.htm How about a re-design of the application-browser using tabs (if not a second-level hierachy for technical reasons)? Do you think it would improve user-experience (I do)? Would it be much work? Mockup: http://img482.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tabbedappbrowserho1.png Another point: If one could use the same screen-estate for the main-menu as the ASUS-device uses for its launcher - ideally reducing the amount of icons by sub-categories - one could well integrate the tabbed app-browser directly into the 'Computer'-menu and NOT have the startup-lag of a separate application-browser, thus solving problem 2), I think. Just a reminder that this option exists; 'Mint' does something like that. Mockup: http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mainmenujp8.png Greets, Chris -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org