AlexanderDomanski: Nice idea to remove stuff that is usually opened through Nautilus. I am doing so for a long time to keep menus clutter free. But I do not like the idea to remove the system tool menu. It must be a clear seperation if I administer (read change) my system or if I do something with my System which does not affect the system itself but has something to do with it. For me these are for example the log viewer and the network tools. By the way: I do not like the idea of moving new login to the screensaver. That is not a typical use of it, is it? It is crap to wait ten minutes for the screensaver to than click on new login. New login in nested window should be hidden only, and not entirely removed.

AlanTam: I cannot find a revalent spec about replacing things like "Firefox Web Browser" with "Web Browser". This makes sense since we should have specified a preferred browser in "Preferences -> Preferred Applications", and this link should point to that preferred application. The same should also apply to many other things, e.g. mail client, cd burner. Should we invent new /etc/alternatives/* for them?

AlanTam: "Preferences -> Removable Drives and Media Preferences" is mostly about "which application to launch" when an event occurs. So why not merge it into "Preferred Applications"?

ChristophNoack: First, keep up the good work. I have some comments to your specification, because things should presented to the user in a common and complete way.

There are so many other places to improve the usability (common file selector, better working with old disk drives). Just an idea: In contrast to over-slim the menu - create an applet to automatically shows the 5 most used applications in the Panel? First, the user learns what applicatons he owns - later there is only need for an one-click-start-program behaviour.

Sandis Neilands: Hi! I made some notes while reading this spec too.

A little note about user-friendlieness: please don't repeat the same mistake windows made - being user-friendly doesn't mean hiding advanced stuff from newbies. If it's hidden, there is a possibility they never discover how to enable it. Instead a clear and understandable organization is needed. So - keep up the good work!

NigelTao: Add the "Web Browser" and "E-mail" launchers to the top of the application menu - since they're used so often, make them two (close) clicks away, instead of three. Note that you can do this now, on Breezy with editable menus. Other OSs/distros that do so (or did so) include Microsoft and Novell Linux Desktop, although note that Microsoft botched it by putting the Web Browser icon the furthest away from the first click.

JorgeBernal: hiding the "MIME items" should imply an increase on the number of "New file" templates on nautilus, otherwise creating a new document becomes extremely difficult. Looking at the detailed spec it seems OO.org items are not going to be removed so I think what you wanted to mean in the spec was "If an item is a viewer and is primarily launched by a specific MIME type and works with one file at a time, it can be hidden"

StuartLangridge: if applications that are generally tied to a mimetype and launched with one file, like Totem, are now to be launched only by launching the file, do those applications need "File > Open" any more? If it's there then people will be encouraged to think that they should open files by using it, and will then be frustrated because they'll think "I must launch Totem and then use its Open command" and not be able to find Totem. If it doesn't have an Open command then they'll be more at home with the idea that "Totem" isn't an application, their movies are "directly clickable" rather than having to be opened in a helper app -- the focus goes back to the file, not the application.

JorgeBernal: About Evolution... my mum has no idea what the word "Groupware" means, but she know what email is, she's not alone about this Smile :)

Maybe we should include something in the documentation for power users if items are going to be removed. For instance, I completely agree on hiding multimedia systems selector, but if I need to run it a table with Hidden items -> Command name would be nice

What happens when installing a new app tied to a MIME-type? The menu would be inconsistent Sad :( gnome-app-install love, maybe?

ManuLopezIbanez: It would be nice to get this completely fixed and define a general policy for Menus. However, it is not going to happen for Drapper, nor in the near future. Perhaps enforcing the wrong policy will be worse than having nothing. And it is going to be very difficult to get it right in the first strike. There are going to be very conflictive opinions on some issues, especially if reasons are not clear as crystal to most people and it just looks like a personal feeling. As the quote in the GNOME Usability says: What's important is not that we can conceive the idea, but that when we actually test it on people you discover it doesn't work... your intuition is wrong.

First, please, we should not reinvent the wheel. Is there any chance to work with GNOME Usability and Better Desktop on this? After all, Libre Software is about sharing knowledge and cooperation...

Second, there is not need to enforce everything. If something is not clear and cannot be tested thoroughly, it is always better to leave it as is now. For example, New Login replaced with button in gnome-screensaver doesn't make much sense to me. What happens if you don't use screensaver? How will you find this option? Another example, why "About Me" + "Users & Groups" + "Sessions" should be integrated? What they have to do with each other? "About Me" and "Sessions" don't require sudo while "Users & Groups" does.

Third, do not make things impossible (or very difficult) for experienced users. For example, make easy for a power user to unhide everything that is hidden by default. Now there is a task that goes Develop way to right-click on menu item and select "Hide", however, how are you going to "unhide" menu items without a Menu Editor and using D&D and right-click? And, by the way, the answer is no: that someone is an experienced user doesn't mean that she/he prefers to edit obscure configurations file using vi from the command line, if there is a quick, clear and nice interface, experienced people will love it.

Finally, anyone aware of this policy is automatically disqualified to test it (me included). We can give our opinion and surely if it doesn't work for us, then it is broken. However, it doesn't follow that if it works for us, then it works. Since we have been exposed to this spec, we are biased and we already know how it works and how to make it work.

Duffman25: I agree with most of the changes proposed, however, if many items are going to be hidden, then I suggest that they still apear in 'gnome-control-center'. It would be ideal if some love was dedicated to it to at least make it more polished, something similar to what suse has done in suse 10.0: http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=464&slide=37 This would please the people at the forums that have asked for a proper control panel: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=44985. This should be the best solution: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=234968&postcount=20. Note that I'm not saying ditch the menu System-Preferences, but provide another way of accesing the hidden ones that is easy to use, clear & uncluttered.

AlexHudson: comment about "If an item is primarily launched by a specific MIME type and works with one file at a time, it can be hidden" - that seems pretty wrong to me. Firstly, it destroys my use of the application without needing a file - sometimes I don't want to save my work, sometimes I want to cut'n'paste it into another application I have open. I don't necessarily want to have to create a file just to do that. Also, it seems it's just moving the problem: instead of the application being in the Applications menu, it's now effectively in the 'Create new file' menu (unless I want to edit old data, which I probably only want to do 60% of the time). Plus, my apps are now split between two menus. I like the idea of being document-centric, but don't like this approach.

JasonQuigley:

ÉtienneBersac: I agree with a lot of changes except xsane removal.

Richard Kleeman: I use xsane often outside gimp. It doesn't make sense to me to be forced to launch the big program gimp when a simple scan is desired. Also I did not understand the removal of "login as another user" I use this all the time, is it integrated somewhere else obvious?

JeffSchroeder: Did anyone think about users who want to use totem to stream internet videos? This is an inconvenience to them. Normal users would do this and totem <---> firefox/epiphany integration isn't that great ATM.

LorenzoEDanielsson: As others have pointed out, one thing I would like is that KDE applications don't show up in Gnome. I'm not sure if the opposite holds. I'd like to be able to access applications like Gimp, Inkscape and Abiword from KDE. Regarding Evolution, I really wish they would do a proper split into multiple applications. I don't really understand why my mail client handles my appointments. I know there's been some discussion about this upstream, but I don't know what the final decision is. Otherwise, I mostly quite like the spec. I'll lose some things that I use regularly, but 1. I can always add them myself and 2. I'd be ready to sacrifice a lot to get less bloated menus.

TobiasWolf: For new inexperienced users functional completeness of the system is mirrored in the application menus. Every function the system is able to perform should be present (example: Hey, you could use Bittorrent to download that quickly - Let me have a look, no, I don't have Bittorrent, pity). If it's hidden, it is not existent. Another example: As a little challenge, I dumped Breezy on a friend's laptop who had no prior linux experience at all. On asking how it goes she replied "I can't hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to end processes". Still, the function is in fact present in the menus, but shortcuts (mouse and kb) are used by anybody (novice and advanced) once they have been discovered. To conclude: It is to be seen whether there should be only one way to access a function. I would say no, since the menu is like a software "shelf" where everthing that's present has a place, but there are also nice shortcuts like RMB -> burn, RMB -> create archive where they contextually make sense. Also different ways to access a function are good as in the Windows task manager's ctrl-alt-del keyboard shortcut,or the mouse-based right-clicking the task bar. A final example: In MS Word the most frequent function used is "paste". It's in the menus, there's a button, there's a context menu and there's a shortcut. The most frequently used method to access paste is the kb-shortcut. Still noone would remove it from the menus, because it has to be present as a prove of it's existence <http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/11/7.aspx>.

resulting recommendations

KarlRelton: I support the calls to not hide Totem. Some of our DVDs simply do not auto-play (others do), and Nautilus opens a browser window on them - showing my daughter all kinds of confusing looking files rather than simply playing the film. Opening totem movie player from the menu is easy to explain as the work-around for such discs. No matter how well device detection etc. works, there are bound to be corner cases like this where having the menu button is the best 'get out of jail' card.

MatthewEast: there are some good ideas on this spec, but a lot of the ideas will harm Ubuntu in my opinion. Removing all items from menus which are launched by a specific mime would hurt me because I like opening some programs from the menu directly (PLEASE DON'T REMOVE TOTEM, or anything in GRAPHICS!). Equally, moving non-administrative activities into the Administrative menu simply to eliminate the System Tools section is a bad idea IMHO. I would prefer moving the System Tools submenu from Applications to System. In general - you should look at the nature of the problem that the spec is aimed at fixing: in fact, only small amounts of tweaking needs to be done to the menu, massive purging is not needed. A menu can be tidy and useful without being minimal. I currently think the Applications menu is very well ordered and quite intuitive. If I am looking for a program, I know where to find it. If i think it's the the wrong place (as I recently did for gnome-blog), I file a bug, and it gets moved (in the case of gnome-blog, from Accessories -> Internet).

SaschaBrossmann:

CarlosRibeiro: It's clear that the Ubuntu menu can be improved, and greatly simplified, but please, **don't overdo it**. Usability is a fine art; it's all about balance, it's about not cluttering the menus but also allowing for people to find their own preferred idioms of choice. Also, **acessibility** comes to mind as a potential problem. Sometimes menus are just that -- more accessible, specially considering people with disabilities.

Lastly, let's try to avoid turning it into a religious battle: "having only one obvious way to do something" (as some say, the 'Python Way') versus "having more than one way of doing things" (or the 'Perl Way'). Balance is hard to attain but it's the right thing to do IMHO.

NathanWillis:

MattiasWadenstein: How about a right-click "show expert options" in the menus to show hidden options? I've spent several minutes trying to figure out how to unhide something (window manager properties), with no luck. I don't mind hiding stuff to unclutter, but hiding it so far away that a "power user" can't find it, even when he knows what he is looking for, is not good usability either.

NicholasSmith: What about redesigning the layout of the main menu (not the menu bar with the three seperate menus). I like what Sun did with their gnome install, pushing the Applications into a sub-menu, and having other frequently used entries in the primary menu. I think it's an improvement over the stock gnome main menu and could at least be a start in improving things. You can see the layout in the screenshots http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=279&slide=55

NeilWoolford: General policy is good, to reduce clutter and group programs appropriately, but maybe some details are tricky... The slightly spartan nature of Gnome over KDE is one of the reasons I use and recommend Ubuntu.

Purging "System Tools":

Accessories:

Graphics:

"Internet" and "Office":

Sound and video:

MattBretl: Here's my personal proposal for integrating the show/hide/install/uninstall process for Applications menu items... Comments obviously welcome.

I believe that this follows a user's train-of-thought when searching for applications. Example: I'm looking for a spreadsheet program. I go to the Office menu, but I don't see the desired program. I click "More..." and can immediately run, display in menu, or install the desired program. (Clicking off the Office menu and going to Applications -> System Tools -> Applications Menu Editor or Applications -> Add Applications is counter-intuitive, when all I really want is "More..." programs in my Office menu.)

This also encourages users to experiment with the wealth of free software available. Most people associate "Add Applications" with inserting a CD or floppy disk from a retail box. (Look at the icon for Add Applications - it's a CD, a floppy, and retail box!) "More..." suggests that free software is just a single click away, which is the impression that we'd like to achieve.

The no sudo/ no menu should be extended to naultilus and gtk file picker so if there is no sudo access you cant browse to '/'

nouse4anick: As a CS major, some of my work depends on some of these options being open to me. I would love to know the reasoning behind removing the 'new login in nested window' option among others. One of the greatest things I have found about Linux is the ability to customize everything to what YOU need it to do. If I need to have nested window logins, I should not have to spend 3+ hours trying to find a work around!

MenusRevisited/Comments (last edited 2008-08-06 16:15:58 by localhost)