Office/ and Utilities/ menu reorganization

[Matthias Welwarsky]

On Tuesday 09 August 2005 12:01, Matthias Welwarsky wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 August 2005 11:44, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> > On Tuesday 09 August 2005 11:37, Benjamin Meyer wrote:
> > > Personally I vote to remove all of the "More Applications" menus. 
> > > Having large menus is better then being confused.
> >
> > Oh, yes -- those very few times I actually use the application menu I get
> > lost, too, because of the more applications sub menu. And it's usually
> > just a few apps that are in their compared to the long list in the
> > application menu.
> >
> > On the other hand, why not just get rid of the applications menu? Put the
> > applictions:/ ioslave by default on the panel, make it read/write so it
> > can be used to organize it and reserve the k-menu for important stuff
> > like recent documents, create new documents, login/logout, preferences
> > and bookmarks. Maybe add a little triangle or something to the app icons
> > (or three dots to the names) that are actually folders. Maybe hide
> > already running applications that cannot be started a second time?
> >
> > Somehow, the applications:/Office/ sheet is a lo less intimidating than
> > the menu, perhaps because of the big, friendly icons.
>
> That's not a bad idea alltogether, you know. The whole start menu thing is
> a pain in the neck. We keep it just so that windows users don't get
> confused, but If you look at what stunts Microsoft has to pull to make it
> somewhat manageable, like dynamically hiding entries that have not been
> touched for some time, you clearly get the feeling that it's not the best
> solution for the problem ...

... and bing, an idea pops up: remember segusoland, then LogicalDesktop, now 
OneFinger :-) See: http://onefinger.sourceforge.net. The original idea was a 
finder-like application that lets you incrementally search for applications 
to handle a certain task, narrowing down choices until you found the one 
application that fits the task.

Now let's apply this idea to the "applications" window: Lets get rid of the 
tree-like structure with categories and the ever going fights where to put 
what. The window would by default just display every application installed in 
a flat iconview, and there would be a combo box that selects the categories. 
Whenever you change the category, the icon view will show only the matching 
applications. Look at Qtopia's Document tab as an example.

A global accelerator would be attached to opening the application window. This 
combobox would have key focus by default, the icon view would be next in 
focus sequence, so you can easily use it with the keys alone. You can also 
use the mouse wheel on the combobox, making it quick to browse the categories 
with the mouse if you're looking for something.

Applications could also make their own categories, for example there could be 
an "koffice" category that contains all related applications, or a "quanta" 
category that contains all the applications related to quanta. Or you could 
have two indices, one by category, one by application relation.

-- 
From the 'Handbook of Corporate Slang':

- to protect prior investment (phrase):
    describes the inability to revert a wrong decision made
    in the past, expresses willingness of throwing 
    good money after bad. (q.v. Fiorina, C.)