On Dec 30, 2007 1:09 PM, nodata <lsof@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Good point. But why must a user choose a category in order to find an > application? Surely a menu is only useful if the user doesn't know what > the application is called. Surely an app can be in multiple categories? > > I'm not a fan of hunting through menus. It makes no sense to me that my > (Evolution) address book is under the "Internet" menu, but my calendar > is under "Office". > > Perhaps we should look for a different approach. You probably want some kind of task oriented tag system, instead of just using categories. Your address book, email, and browser all belong to the Internet task. Your address book, email, and address book all belong to the PIM task. Your calendar/todo system, word processor, and spreadsheet all belong to the Office/Workflow task. Of course, the system isn't set up for it nearly as well as it is for just pigeonholing everything into single categories, so I just put my most frequently used apps on a bar on the side of my desktop, and touch the menu system rarely. Alot of the desktops, except for Gnome and OS X seem to focus on monitoring which apps get clicked on the most, and try to provide this for you automagically. They fail, because rather than making things easy, they put a bunch of frequently used items in unpredictable spaces, forcing the user to hesitate when trying to do what he/she does the most often. Of course we probably need some good usability studies, and I'm sure Microsoft has enough money invested in their POS start menu that says users like having their commonly used programs shift position regularly. A task oriented desktop has been my (increasingly devalued) 0.02 USD for the past year and half though. -Yaakov -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
