Mr. Dunbar:
(Unfortunately, this is off-topic and has the probability of starting a flame war. Nevertheless, I cannot keep from commenting. Please ignore this post if you have any common sense. :-) )
Eric Dunbar wrote:
Speaking of the best GUI design in existence...
Has anyone encounter an hacks/settings which allow for a "fixed" and single menu-bar. The worst design failure of the Windows-inspired GUIs that are KDE or GNOME is the menu-in-window design.
I agree! Usability studies showed many, many years ago that menus at the top, bottom, or sides have the fastest access time and the fewest errors of any other position (the only *faster* access is right under where the mouse arrow is right now, i.e., contextual menus). I am constantly flummoxed by the Windows and Linux conventions of putting all the menus in individual windows that move around and waste screen real estate (all Windows/Linux windows have a title bar *and* a menu bar, making one of them redundant).
The only worse waste of screen real estate is big, colorful, and oh-so-cryptic button bars (grrrrr...). Or, maybe a big ugly Dock centered at the bottom of the screen is more wasteful. I go back and forth on this one.
(Don't get me wrong -- I am a joyful Macintosh OS X fanatic. But thoughtless use of those kinds of interfaces irritate me to no end.)
I'd love to be able to pin all menu bars to the top of the window a la Mac! The launch bar is a miserable compromise between fixed menu bars and task bars (alas, even the miserable Dock is a better solution).
Here, here!
I started experimenting with Linux a couple of years ago. One of my incentives was to see what new and innovative user experiences could be generated by an unfettered Open Source community. Sadly, much of what I see in Open Source software are clones of existing applications -- Windows applications, at that. KDE and Gnome seem indistinguishable to me, since they both largely mimic the Windows experience.
I would be pleased to learn either that significant Open Source programmers used (a) non-Windows (including but not limited to the Mac) applications as models, or (b) created a whole new paradigm for its interface. (And, no, using the Matrix movies as your model doesn't count as "new"!)
Sorry for the rant!
Best wishes, Clint
-- Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT net> _______________________________________________ yellowdog-newbie mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/mailman/listinfo/yellowdog-newbie
