GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 81545
Task oriented menu names
Last modified: 2015-03-24 13:01:17 UTC
I'd like task oriented menu names, instead of current category names.
like what? Concrete suggestions are good :)
A menu structure can be this: Desktop preferences-> <gnomecc stuff> Internet programs-> Connect via modem (gppp) Browse the Web (Galeon) Browse the Web (Mozilla) Share files (Gnapster) ... Productivity software-> Write a document (AbiWord) blabla (Gnumeric) Manage finances (Gnucash) ... Pictures and photos-> blalbah (Gimp) Music and movies-> Listen to musica (Rhythmbox) ... Game and enterteinments-> Play chess (gnome-chess) ... Accessory programs-> Edit a text file (Gedit) ... Development tools-> Design your GUI (Glade) ... System management->[this can be a menu like Actions, like in Ximian 1.4] New login New login in a nested window [these 2 items can be moved in Actions] --- Configuration editor Printer management Terminal ... --- Help and support Browse your personal files [this is home dir and can be in Actions under gnome-searchtool]
cc'ing usability maint.
Greetings Pier, I was wondering, in your description of these task-oriented menus, you include the actual names of the programs in parentheses, eg: Browse the Web (Mozilla) ^^^^^^^ did you intend for the parentheses and actual names to appear in the menus as well, or are they only included to simplify the task of explaining how this would work? (Just trying to understand exactly how you envision your solution functioning.)
hi anna... This is my opinion, so take it at that... I really like the idea of task oriented menus. I think they are an important change we need to make if gnome is to move away from an application centered interface towards a document object based interface (I'm not sure what the opinion of the rest of the usability team on this ides is though). In such an interface there is no longer any concept of an application, rather all "apps" are really just views of documents. So in this sense, i think including the application name would be *bad* thing. Anyway to be honest if we are going to do this right it is really something that should be aimed at gnome 3 not gnome 2.2 or 2.4, I just don't think such a drastic change is possible without fixing other aspects of the gnome interface in parallel and considering ui freeze is in a month, i think sticking with the current application based menus is probably a better idea for now. anyway moving this bug to the panel where most of the menu related discussion is occuring.
Anna: With parentheses I meant actual names to appear in the menus as well, this avoids the duplication. Think if you have Mozilla and Galeon. Without parentheses you have two items called Browse the Web, so you can't understand which application you should use to fit your needs. Bordoley: I really really like task oriented menus as you. There is/was a discussion about it on desktop-devel, please tell me if I am wrong (I haven't time to read all the threads). BTW this is a (quick) new version of the possible structure (the order isn't random). Please comment it!! Perhaps we need to discuss this on usability, what do you think Bordoley? Should I GEP this? Produce a document-> Write a simple document (Gedit) Write a document (AbiWord) Create a spreadsheet (Gnumeric) Manage finances (Gnucash) Manage your appointments and mail (Evolution) .....something other..... Access the Internet-> Browse the Web (Galeon) Browse the Web (Mozilla) Chat with your friends (Gaim) Chat on IRC (GNOME Chat) Read and post news (Pan) .....something other..... Pictures and photos-> Create your own picture (Gimp) Browse your pictures and photos collection (Gthumb) .....something other..... Music and movies-> Organize and listen to your music (Rhythmbox) Watch a movie or a clip (Totem) .....something other..... Game and entertainments-> Create your own civilization (Freeciv) .....something other..... Accessory programs-> Perform a calculation (gcalc-tool) .....something other..... Development tools-> Design your GUI (Glade) .....something other..... System management-> Edit your system configuration Manage your printers Terminal .....something other..... --- Help and support Browse your personal files ------------------------ Actions panel menu ----------------------- Recently launched programs-> blahblahblah Recenlty used documents-> blahblah --- Browse your files Search for files... Run a program... Take a screenshot... --- Loggin in and loggin out-> New login New login in a nested window Logout
*** Bug 98222 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Two interesting ideas from bug #98222: * It is very important that the tasks in the list could be changed to meet the user's needs - ex. I don't have the internet connection, so I'm not interested in how to write an e-mail or browse the web. * you should be able to change default program of the task, so if user don't like the selected default program, he can change it by himself.
An alternative to showing the application names in parentheses might be to use a sub-menu where there is more than one application for a particular task. E.g.: Internet > Browse > Galeon > Mozilla Chat > Gaim > xchat News At least that way you don't have the menu cluttered with app names for tasks that don't offer you any choice. But yes, I know sub-menus generally suck :)
I don't think "translating" the existing Application-centric menu naming and sorting into a new set of strings is going to be helpful. Task based menus are a great idea, but I think if we want to do them, we need to take the idea of tasks seriously and actually focus on having a "task" (or at least document) driven registry of some sort rather than the existing application registry. Just putting "Image Editor" in the menus as "Create and Edit Images" (which is basically what the tooltips say now) probably won't help anyone, and could well prevent people from finding applications. On the other hand, a central system for: New->Image New->Text Document New->Spreadsheet could be very useful.... but only if the number of items were restricted to what an individual person actually uses (not just all the document types the system knows about and has apps to handle)
There is no need to rewrite current "Applications" menu - Gnome developers could extend an "Actions" menu a little bit as described in bug #98222 No program names should be displayed in Actions menu (nobody uses two or more different web browsing or e-mail programs - all users choose which program to use as they start working and usually they don't change it) "Action" menu should be for everyday tasks - browse internet, work with emails, work with office documents, etc. "Applications" menu should be for rarelly used tasks and experimenting. Also it's important, that user could be able to change default program of the task, so if he doesn't like the selected default program, he can change it by himself (this is partially done in GNOME Control Center (Applications->Desktop Preferences->Advanced->Prefered Applications) - now users can select default web browser, text editor and terminal program - just add some more programs, at least default email program, default spreadsheet and default document editor). When these changes will be done Gnome will be more comfortable for all users - simple and advanced. I think these changes can be included into Gnome 2.4, because it's simple to do and it's pretty big step in usability and comfortability.
As I said in my previous comment, doing this well is *NOT* easy. Furthermore, the existing "actions" menu isn't really a task oriented interface, at least no more than any other menu (arguably all menus are task oriented to some extent or another). It *is* technically fairly easy to create a new toplevel menu item, so its not really a good idea to conflate these two menus.
*** Bug 94129 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I'm going to close this one out. While I think task based menus are a good idea, I think we need a task based Desktop to really get the benefit of them. Trying to force a task based menu into a mostly application based Desktop seems to create more confusion than anything.