panels and buttons with menus: how important is the arrow?

[Aaron J. Seigo]

hi all ...

in the panels, buttons that pop open a menu currently show a little arrow in 
their upper left corner. while playing around with some ideas for layout and 
presentation of future panel stuff, i got to wondering how important (if at 
all) these arrows are...

i've modified kicker locally[1] so that the arrow only appears on button hover 
or when the menu associated with the button is showing. the arrow is also 
centered instead of in the upper left corner. the result is a cleaner looking 
panel and icons are allowed to stand on their own much better (there is no 
additional arrow obscuring them) ....

the usability question is this:

how important are the arrows as a cue to people that the button is a menu?
do they need to be shown at all times or is on hover/activation good enough?

[1] patch is attached for those who'd like to try it. i'd supply screenshots, 
but since it requires mouse interaction it really makes sense to try it =)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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