Il giorno mer, 22/10/2008 alle 20.42 +0800, Long Gao ha scritto:
> In fact, the real reason why I implemented this start menu is to use a
> widget of GtkWindow to make a start menu more powerful, 


... more powerful... I think it's not more powerful. It just mixes
different concepts that Gnome menu is able to differentiate and so be
more clear.
Remember that the gnome philosophy is "less is more" and this is the
case!

Frequently used applications? ... fewer clicks to achieve a certain
"point" in places or applications menu? A way to quickly see which user
is logged? the Gnome Panel is there, with it's menu and it's applets!
nothing you can't do or can't present clearly to the user. Never saw
something more versatile in Windows.

In you very first post you said that you "always found puzzled of
thinking which menu to click when I want to do something"... but you
really can't tell if you have to go to "Applications" "Places" or
"System"? really? In my opinion it's not true! it's really clear
instead, as I could see from my user testing experience. While it's not
clear what a "Start" button is! You find yourself very comfortable with
that sort of thing just because you "already know it"... perhaps you
"come from Windows" I think... 
Unluckily, many users are "affected" badly by their first experience
with Windows and expect every system to work like that (I'm talking in
general, not about you... just what I saw in my user experience)...

> I wish that a well structured "menu" could provide more
> functionality. 

No, in my opinion a well structured menu is the menu that have only the
functionality it is intended to, and not "more". For example It's better
to leverage the huge horizontal space to have single menus, one of them
is "Applications" that dials only with Applications. It's clear. It's
simple. It's usability...

>  
> From the point of my view, I always want to find some good ideas from
> Windows, which I thought was totally a mistake:). The start menu might
> be a difference.


It's good to take ideas from other Desktops, as long as they don't break
any copyright ;-)
Copying the "idea" (if we can call it so) of Windows main menu is not a
good idea in my opinion. I think that some people wants it just because
"they're used to it". I had many experiences in this sense: many users
want to keep an old applications UI (even if it's absolutely wrong),
just because it is part of their knowledge, and they feel "changes" as
bad things, somehow like start learning again from the beginnings.
But take a "fresh" (uncompromised) user... it will find Gnome menu very
intuitive, and Windows menu something "really strange".

In my opinion we should not make Gnome be like Windows, just to make
users more comfortable to switch their Desktop. Leave this to KDE ;-)
(joking)
Sometimes there's the need to innovate, to follow paths that the others
don't follow, to reach results that the others don't reach...
This is the path that I think gnome is following... and that Apple
summarize with it's "think different" moto.

> 
> _______________________________________________
> Usability mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability


________________________________________________________________________

Ing. D a n i e l e  L e v o r a t o
InfoCamere S.c.p.A
049/8288681
System Engineer
Direzione Registro Imprese 
Team Middleware
_______________________________________________
Usability mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability

Reply via email to