Gnome Icons, Gnome/KDE Menus need improvement

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 09:08:42 -0400, Dan Williams <dcbw at redhat.com> wrote:
> Using "More" menus is not really the way to go, the way to go is to have
> sane programs that do what you want, and not to have 5 programs that
> each do 75% of what you want but all have non-overlapping features too.

I think your assuming that what all users want...is something sane.
You seem to be arguing here that developers should be implementing all
desired features into their applications. That point of view is in
tension with the idea that an application developer that implements
all features sees a high cost to development and maintanence if not
also UI design.  Let me just reference Havoc's (in)famous
ranting on the issue for those who are new and are lurking:
http://ometer.com/free-software-ui.html.

Now I'm not saying that I agree with either point of view. But what I
will say is...yer dreaming if you expect there to be a set of
non-overlapping featured default applictions that fill the average
users need completely.  Exactly 3 people in the user base are going to
be happy with the feature set of the default applictions, this is not
going to change.  Most people will be happy with most defaults, but
will feel the desire to suppliment them with overlapping applications
with specific features, this is not going to change.  A few people,
will actively poke around in their package manager download helper to
explore alternatives, this isn't going to change either. In fact as
package management becomes easier to point and click through...yer
going to see a lot more on this from more in-experienced hobbyists.
And then there are the 3 people who do an everything install.

I'm not suggesting that you cater to those 3 people who install
everything, but there needs to be a way to encourage people to explore
the options that Extras is going to provide in a way that does not
produce clutter, or else why do we pretend like Extras is going to be
important and useful. People are going to explore and poke around. 
This has come up in another thread, there needs to be a way to promote
frequently used or prefered applictions into the menu structure.
Either we get the frelling menu editting working on we do something
clever like provide a folder interface for ALL installed applications
with .desktop files and then use some automation to promote prefered
or recently used applications into the menu structure.

-jef