GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 89874
System menu should be named Computer
Last modified: 2015-03-24 13:00:56 UTC
Actions is a confusing name. Post-2.0 I have observed a large amount of confusion and questions by users about this name. We knew it was a bad name, but couldn't think of a good alternative. In simple tests, "Desktop" didn't prove to be a silver bullet, but was much better than actions (its certainely a tighter category, and seems to fit all items reasonably well).
There's also a nice little symmetry between "Applications" and "Desktop"... but that is probably totally bogus *grin*
do we have a general agreement on this ?
No, this bug is for getting one ;-) Nils, Calum & I haven't been so successful at connecting over IRC as of late.
cc'ing Sun docs guys as well as I can't remember whether they like "Desktop" as a possible replacement for "Actions" or not, but generally I like it better than "Actions"... indeed I remember indpendently suggesting it myself at one point :)
It was probably your suggestion and it just stuck in my brain somewhere. We should probably keep this in the back of our minds in case we think of a better word. "Desktop" isn't too great either, though I think its a lot better than "Actions".
Seth and calum: I had an idea last nite and was wondering what your thoughs were on it: How about changing the menus to something like this Applications Task Settings System Tasks would include the existing tasks plus others. What I had in mind was: Tasks |-Browse the Web... |-Compose a Document... |-Search for Files... |-Send an Email... |-Take a Screenshot... |-Help What else can you think of? Most of these could be configurable through the "Preferred Applications" preference dialog. Personally I would love to see gnome move towards a task based menu system, but right now this would probably be a little hard, but something like this would be nice imho. This is my idea for the system menu (or whatever we want to call it) System |-Lock the Screen |-Logoff |-Restart the Computer |-Shutdown the Computer Ok just thought I would throw the idea out.
I guess if we were really serious about it, Tasks should come before Applications :) It's a possible step in the right direction I guess, but I think we need a clear vision of where we're going before we start getting down to the nitty-gritty of re-arranging menus.... maybe you or Seth has one, but I know I don't :)
i have a patch to implement this (along with adding a help menu) eugene is this term ok with the doc guys as well?
This use of the term Task is fine by me, but I wonder is this new idea of a Tasks menu a bit of overkill. Do any of the items in the Task menu do anything that is not already done by Applications menu? Calum asked for a clear vision of where we are going with this before implementing and I think we need some more discussion on this before we make a change that will have a major impact on the UI, and hence the documentation. I'd like to hear what Seth and Nils think of this idea. Also cc-ing Pat and Irene for their input.
eugene ignore the discussion of a task menu, that was off topic. WHat I was wonderin about was changing s/actions/desktop.
Yes, I agree with the s/Actions/Desktop change. I think Desktop is a big improvement from Actions. We might also want to look at moving the Desktop Preferences menu from the Applications menu to the new Desktop menu. We could then drop the "Desktop" from "Desktop Preferences".
Hi, I'd like to suggest that *some* formal testing be done before you guys make such a move. (As opposed to the "simple" testing that Seth reports having done.) There are several good reasons for this: 1. It will provide you with insight into how average people approach the menus, and should be able to give you a definitive answer about the viability of the term "desktop". 2. It will also provide you with documented, reproduceable evidence in support of the change. (C'mon, do you really think that there will be no flaming about this? :) 3. It may suggest to you further ways to improve the menus. 4. It will allow you to engage people who are normally outside of the official "gnome community", which will benefit gnome greatly by enriching its genepool. So that is why I think you should test this. As for how: When I was working on Ximian's menus, I found that using glade to make prototypes for testers to interact with was very simple and effective. Using glade, I created a window, added a menu bar (and menus) to it, and displayed the mockup on my laptop. Testers were asked to pretend that the glade'd menus were really menus, and to identify where in the menus they would look for various specific menu items. I tested the Ximian menus this way on 13 (way more than necessary) people. If you ran a test like this on as few as five people, you would have statistically significant data about your proposal. (And since glade mockups are so easy to edit, you can re-test various layouts as deemed necessary based on how pooorly (or well) your testers perform. Just my recommendation. -Anna
anna, I'm inclined to agree with you. Actually I just started working on a tasked based layout for the gnome menus (mostly for fun but maybe for reality). I think you're right and that we need to consider the menu's as a whole before we make such a change.
Anna, I have done formal testing on way more than 5 people from all sorts of use categories. Small numbers of people (fewer than 20) are not really useful for doing more than finding general usability problems... you need more people to differentiate between major use cases (and strictly speaking 5 people probably doesn't result in statistically significant results (which usually means something like 95% certainty), but it does produce useful results)). Anyway, task based menus are vaguely in the pipes, but they're not going to be here by GNOME 2.2. We can do the Actions->Desktop rename now, and I'm now pretty sure it would be an improvement.
Well, if this string is still about Actions vs Desktop, then here's my 2 eurocents worth: Under our present naming conventions, where Desktop = Sum total of GNOME things in front of you, then Desktop wins hands down. However, according to developer colleagues, everyone in the world knows that "the desktop is the thingy wot is behind the icons", as Jeff elegantly puts it. In that case, Desktop as a menu header on the Menu Panel becomes confusing at best and meaningless at worst. An earlier contributor suggested s/Actions/System. Well, that could work. You could also combine the two words into "System Actions", if you didn't mind a two-word menu header. What I'm suggesting is that "Desktop" appears to be so contentious, that using this term as a menu header is >>bound<< to cause problems. I'd recommend finding a different alternative. Pat
I have no problem with Applications and Action when I saw this first I thought that this is a damn' good expression for the menus. But, sure I'm not the beginner and I do not care if it is named Desktop or whatever, because I will always find what I need in Gnome. But that's just my thought.
" We might also want to look at moving the Desktop Preferences menu from the Applications menu to the new Desktop menu. We could then drop the "Desktop" from "Desktop Preferences". " For reference this is bug 92719 and it would be great to get done along with this bug and bug 75312
I don't think, that "Actions" menu should be named to "Desktop". "Actions" menu is pretty big step in usability and comfortability - it's very easy to understand what is under "Actions" menu and users like task-oriented menu. If you think, that "Actions" is not correct name, then rename this menu to "Tasks", but not to "Desktop". I think Gnome developers could extend an "Actions" menu a little bit as described in bug #98222 (add some often used actions - manage files, browse Internet, change Desktop preferences). Then "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). Please, don't rename "Actions" to "Desktop" without pool in www.gnomedesktop.org - lots of my acquaintance like "Actions" menu.
Having a tasks menu is nice, but that's not at all what the "Actions" menu is right now. Its a pretty eclectic set of items determined largely by not having a good specific application to put these things in then by them being a coherent "set". That's probably why the menu is so hard to renname... But as I erroneously commented in another bug (that got steered to this discussion, I don't know how...): "Logical consistency" is much less important than probability of recognition when they want an item inside a particular menu. People do not recognize "Actions" as being a viable option for containing things like "logout". Basically it doesn't matter as much if categories are sensible when you sit reasoning them out as if you think "I should click there" quickly when you are looking for an item that is contained in that menu.
I like Mark's point. A "Desktop" menu would provide a *much* more sensible home for the remaining "stickly" item still living in the Applications menu because we have nowhere else to put it.
Seth: What do you mean by ' "stickly" item '?
An item that we haven't found a satisfactory location for, and not for a lack of thinking.
Please, leave "Actions" menu (or rename this menu to "Tasks") in Gnome panel - after "Open Recent" appears in this menu I (and most of my friends) use this very often. It would be nice if you do like Egle K.say (see comment above): "extend an "Actions" menu a little bit as described in bug #98222 (add some often used actions - manage files, browse Internet, change Desktop preferences)." I also think, that "Actions" menu is more user-friendly, than "Desktop". It's very clear - if user want to do some jobs (for example start program or open some document) he go to "Actions" (or "Tasks") menu. It seems, that only two people really wants to remove task-based menu (like "Actions") from Gnome panel - Seth Nickell and Mark Finlay, but lots of simpe users like task-based menus (and lots Desktop moves to this direction - see for example Mandrake's "-> What to do?" menu: http://images.mandrakesoft.com/img/screenshots/90scr1.png or http://people.trustcommerce.com/~adam/top10/wrong.html#4)
I think that there should be task based menus, see bug 94112 . The thing is that the Actions menu is not it ! It is just a mix of desktop related stuff that doesn't fit into the applications menu. There is nothing stopping us adding a Tasks menu later if we change Actions to Desktop. They are two sepporate things imho. There is also the options to use "System" as Ximian have done: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2003-June/msg00109.html
Mark Finlay wrote: >There is nothing stopping us adding a Tasks menu later if we change Actions to Desktop. *Later* isn't good word. Please, make these changes in one step and don't leave Gnome without task-based menu. Btw, people think, that "Actions" is easier to understand than "System" - see for example http://www.tuxreports.com/index.php?module=prodreviews&func=showcontent&id=28 lph@tuxreports.com wrote: [...] "First and foremost, the “Run Program” option is buried in the “System” menu, while I would prefer to have easily available in Actions, where it is more easily accessed." [...]
I like desktop over action.
Ok, I went to get this bug rolling again for 2.5/2.6. Please, NO more comments about task based menus. Actions is not a task based menu , as has been mentioned earlier so please see bug 94112 for general discussions about the panel menus. This may need to be discussed on the lists again, and I'd love to say "Go with Desktop", but I can think of two reasons not to use it: 1. The aformentioned ambiguety of the term desktop. 2. The fact that gnome-system tools are almost certainly going to end up part of Gnome at some stage. They need a place in the menus, and they don't fit under "Desktop" so we need to thing about where they go. On the other hand I think that the ambiguety of the term "System" actually works in it's favour. The Computer is a System, the OS is a System, the Desktop is a System. Applications/System is a good divide IMHO. Is it possible to get some data about the usability testing the Ximian did on having a "System" menu?
Actions *is* task-based menu and lots of people understand and like this. See for example here http://www.nward.net/technology/gnome2/ also here http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2002-April/msg00065.html and here http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome/2003/debian-gtk-gnome-200310/msg00373.html and here http://people.trustcommerce.com/~adam/top10/wrong.html#4 Here are some citations about Actions menu from above links: Improvements over Gnome 2 [...]the only significant change in usability is the new "Actions" menu, which includes a much-improved file-finding utility, a screen-locking function, and the logout button. [...] [..]Actions is very descriptive of the actual contents of this menu. This menu contains things that do stuff (eg. search, logout, lock display) aka actions the user can do.[...] Problem is, that some actions (for example GDM's "New Login" and "New login in a nested window") are not in Actions menu, but in Applications. Actions menu should be extended a little bit and then Gnome will be more user-friendly (for both - simple and advanced users). Look for example this post: http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome/2003/debian-gtk-gnome-200310/msg00373.html and this bugreport: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98222 Renaming Actions to Desktop isn't good solution, System is a better name for this than Desktop (then Gnome-System-Tools will got to System->Configure, you should change summary of this bug ir you are going to rename Actions to System), but I suggest to leave as is - "Actions".
Here's why I think we should go with Desktop. 1) The menu isn't task based, so lets not try with Actions 2) System is not a "friendly" term. People think of computers in terms of Desktop, laptop, notebook, etc. these are common and "friendly" terms. 3) System has the same ambiguity of Desktop, yet it has been used for things already in the menus like System Settings and System Tools. The word is overloaded in an administrative way. I think the system-tools can fit nicely under the Desktop term. I'm recommending a menu like: Desktop -- Preferences -> -- Administration -> This handles our preferences and system tools menus in a way that I think is obvious what is for the average person to play with and what is administrative work. Saying System -> Prefs or System -> Admin doesn't seem to be better, especially System -> Desktop Preferences which uses both terms and make it more confusing.
I'm closing the bug since the item is now renamed to "Desktop" in HEAD. People who want to debate about task-based menus should go in bug #81545 :-)
I don't want to debate task-based menus, but I think System is a less confusing term than Desktop. Ubuntu already uses System instead of Desktop, and we are considering doing the same in Fedora. Might as well do it upstream, instead of having all distributions patch it out...
Matthias: well, I guess you'll need to convince Bryan :-) Both solutions are fine with me, but Bryan's rationale is better than yours for now. Setting milestone to 2.14 so that we fix this before 2.14.
Bryan is right that we've traditionally reserved the word "System" to connote: "normal people, stay away" (I think this is probably not restricted to GNOME either... its a very administrator-ish word). Desktop has overloading problems, but its preferable from that perspective. Its boring, but "Computer" might actually be the best word. Computer is probably the word people most associate with the whollistic entity anyway, no point in avoiding it.
I did a random survey of half a dozen people on the street. I asked them "What do you expect under a menu item labelled Desktop". Most expected the items on the desktop. Now this is not scientific, but I think it illustrates nicely the issue with using the word "Desktop". However, I don't have a brilliant suggestion.
See also: Bug 331459 -- the menubar in question has no name Bug 332675 -- we have two Places menus with different items
FWIW, we're now using System since both Fedora and Ubuntu were patching to do this. I'll ask to see if they're okay with Computer.
Neither "Actions" nor "System" seem to still be used in the current UI. I didn't read all the comments, but is any part of this bug still relevant, or can we close?
True, this is obsolete with GNOME 3.