task-oriented kickoff

[Michael Rudolph]

Hello everyone,

while we're at the task of improving kickoff, I'd like to tell you my 
thoughts of what should be improved about kickoff and my ideas for how 
it could be done.

Currently kickoff is an application launcher interface and thus, in my 
point of view, is putting the spotlight on the wrong items of our user 
interface.

Instead of making kickoff be about applications, why not let tasks take 
center stage in the start-menu? After all, it's tasks that we really 
want to get done when we use a computer, applications are just the 
necessary means to do it with current technology.

There is already a lot of interesting technology in place (since win95, 
in fact), so the transition from an app-centric user interface to a 
task-centric one could be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, 
which is a good thing in my book.

For starters we could put the recent documents tab up front. This is as 
good as it currently gets in terms of giving users access to their 
current tasks and projects. I'd also rename the tab to "current tasks".

We could start to give better descriptions in applications' .desktop- 
files. So instead of having "Word Processing" in kword's file, we would 
put "Write a letter" or "Write a resumé" in there and launch kword with 
the appropriate "--template" option. (and of course use descriptions 
instead of application names in kickoff).

This is of course just a first step, a very easy one though. I also have 
ideas for further steps, that, although lacking intimate knowledge of 
plasma's inner workings, I'd still call easy, too.

But first I'd like to hear your comments. Are we on the same page with 
task-centric user interfaces? And would such a first step be feasible?

michael