Introducing Homerun

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 16:56:29 Alex Fiestas wrote:
> On Tuesday 13 November 2012 15:56:11 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 13:13:36 Alex Fiestas wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 13 November 2012 11:21:34 Marco Martin wrote:
> > > > agree on above points, i'm not sure how much mainstream krunner can be
> > > > made
> > > > (and yes, it has to be way more visible),
> > > > even if the text field would be always visible or anyways easily
> > > > reachable
> > > > unfortunately a big part of public still needs to browse, don't know
> > > > exactly the psychological reason, but that's what i seen over and over
> > > > again.
> > > 
> > > People are used to Google and googling everything though but that's
> > > something you do when you want to explore or to get NEW information, not
> > 
> > unfortunately, that is not true. that is just "geek wisdom" that is
> > patently, utterly false.
> > 
> > it is a surprise to just about every. single. person. that i demonstrate
> > how you can "search for anything" on your computer. only mac users are
> > familiar with the idea, and then only for user files and a few other
> > select items via spotlight (and even then, many mac users are surprised
> > this feature exists on the OS they use!)
> > 
> > even plainly visible search fields outside of file managers (e.g. in
> > system
> > settings) are often passed by when people look for things.
> > 
> > so , no ... people are not used to searching everything. this may be
> > generational, however, and "digital natives" may be more used to this.
> 
> I haven't said nothing that contradicts what you said on which I fully agree
> (I have mentioned in the past the exact case of osx users don't knowing
> spotlight).
> 
> I introduced the Google example because in the Web realm, even the not
> digital native search for everything and everywhere and those same people
> use bookmarks or other similar mechanism for their favorites.
> 
> There is an obvious reason why people had to get used to search in the web
> and it is its size. People are getting more and more data on their local
> devices so they will have to get use to search as well.
> 
> > i don't think the answer is to give people better solutions for bad
> > patterns ("better hierarchical launchers" in this case), but we need to
> > recognize that search is still not deeply internalized in the broader
> > user base and design for that, e.g. provide mechanisms that gently
> > encourage people to use search more often when available.
> > 
> > > everytime you want to execute the same application you execute every day
> > > a
> > > few times (you don't want to do kickoff--->internet---->rekonq everytime
> > > you want to open a web).
> > 
> > that's what favourites should be for, obviously.
> 
> So we should make it easier to create and use them.

a) agreed (i'd go so far as to suggest that favourites could/should be created 
on behalf of the user based on usage patterns)

b) i wasn't actually trying to suggest that favourites are important, however. 
i was trying to point out that applying "everytime you want to execute the 
same application" to the hierarchy in kickoff is bogus -> that part of kickoff 
is not designed for that. suggesting that something is flawed because it is not 
good at something it is not intended for is an irrelevant observation. 
"Gwenview sucks because it doesn't support batch processing RAW images." it's 
both an accurate observation and utterly irrelevant in the context of 
gwenview.

constructively: if the observation is that people are using an element (in 
this case a hierarchical menu of applications) for something it is not 
designed for (repetative launching), then we need to ask why and how to change 
that choice pattern.

note that kickoff already provides, as its default view, a search field with a 
favourites area directly below it. why are people not using it more? (assuming 
that's actually what is occuring, of course.)

> I have been trying to use KRunner as I use spotlight (since it has been
..
> I looked for the word "webaccounts" willing to find a document I wrote for
> Akademy-es.

if you search for "webaccounts" in krunner, what do you get?

> Another issue is that I can't expand the results in case I need to.

you can scroll through them; you can resize the window they are shown in. what 
method do you have in mind?

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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