GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 397431
"search" field should have deskbar capabilities
Last modified: 2007-02-27 22:26:44 UTC
Opening apps not listed on the favourites menu is in g-m-m slower that it was on the gnome menubar. The extra time and mouse movement required to open the "more apps" window and select the desired app make it cumbersome as well, and opening an app without actual use of the mouse is a too difficult. These issues would IMO be solved, should the "search" field have some deskbar functionality. If I want to open Gaim I could just press alt+F1, then type "gai" (since the search bar appears focused) and get the option to start Gaim, just as it happens with deskbar. If I want to open my "music" folder? same thing. No need to scroll the "show" menu. Just get to do what I want to do, fast.
Yeah it would be great having deskbar functionality in the gnome-main-menu. Perhaps have live results popup in the box where the icons are instead of a drop down list like deskbar. This could be extended to include the desktop search apps(beagle or tracker)
If something like this is done it should only return search results for .desktop files (things that would be in the menu). Having the applications menu search for files would be weird.
If you have a standard gnome-panel, you can just hit Alt-F2 and type "gai" to launch gaim. If you have beagle installed you can hit F12 (or whatever's specified in beagle's prefs) to search for files. In both of these cases the app you launch or the document you open with appear at the top of the recently used apps or docs list in the main-menu for subsequent, quick access.
"If you have a standard gnome-panel, you can just hit Alt-F2 and type "gai" to launch gaim". Honestly, I don't understand why being able to do something through Alt-F2 is a reason not to be able to do it from g-m-m. If that was the case, wouldn't the menu itself be redundant? Since everything you can do from it, you can do from Alt-F2. Is there a reason why it would be a bad idea to give the g-m-m search bar some basic deskbar, or even Alt-F2, capabilities?