panel and session manager usability requests

[Ali Akcaagac <ali akcaagac stud fh-wilhelmshaven de>]

hi there,

i have some issues with current gnome2 usability. i am still using
gnome-2-0 cvs branches and i don't know if these aspects will be taken
care off in gnome 2.2 but i think i bring them up here so this can be
talked about.

panel:
======

if an user wants to add stuff on his panel he usually rightclicks on the
panel and selects

+ add to panel
       |
       |---------- accessories
       |---------- amusements
       |---------- internet
       |---------- multimedia
       |---------- utility
       |---------- launcher
       |---------- launcher from menu
       |---------- gnome menu
       |---------- drawer
       |---------- log out button
       |---------- lock button

now the normal task for a panel is to add stuff easily to it. personally
i am adding launchers from menu there using that way. but personally i
am usually stuck in this menu for some seconds. the problem is sometimes
depending where you click the second window popups left to the root menu
and sometimes right to it. depending how much space you have left before
reaching screen border. personally the second popup (accessories,
amusement....) is not very well thought. it contains stuff that usually
would come in mind as last. also the first few seconds everytime people
need to search for "launcher from menu" and then dive into another panel
which is really timeconsumming. for the stuff that may come in mind last
is 'launcher, gnome menu, drawer, logout button, lock button' these
things can be easily hidden in a submenu. the applets are positioned
correctly there. launcher from menu should go into the top panel and act
like the applets panel.. to clarify it here how it should look for
better and quicker access.

+ add to panel
       |
       |---------- accessories
       |---------- desktop preferences
       |---------- games
       |---------- graphics
       |---------- ..... the menu stuff for the apps
       |---------- system tools
       |---------- ======================================
       |---------- accessories
       |---------- amusements
       |---------- internet
       |---------- multimedia
       |---------- utility
       |---------- ======================================
       |---------- extras  
                      |---------- launcher
                      |---------- gnome menu
                      |---------- drawer
                      |---------- log out button
                      |---------- lock button

+ add to panel
       |
       |---------- applications (was launcher from menu before)
       |---------- ===========================
       |---------- accessories
       |---------- amusements
       |---------- internet
       |---------- multimedia
       |---------- utility
       |---------- ===========================
       |---------- launcher
       |---------- gnome menu
       |---------- drawer
       |---------- log out button
       |---------- lock button

or:

+ add to panel
       |
       |---------- applications (was launcher from menu before)
       |---------- ===========================
       |---------- accessories
       |---------- amusements
       |---------- internet
       |---------- multimedia
       |---------- utility
       |---------- ===========================
       |---------- extras  
                      |---------- launcher
                      |---------- gnome menu
                      |---------- drawer
                      |---------- log out button
                      |---------- lock button

======== <--- are separators to clean things up a bit.

i know this will enlargen things a bit but it clears up the utilities
from the applets and make it accessable with less submenu diving. if you
want to keep the old way then this can be done too (as alternative). at
least it would be good to have the 'launcher from menu' either separated
with a separator (as visual quick effect) or integrated into the 2nd
popupmenu.

session manager:
================

i have issues understanding the session manager functionality specially
if you tweak in the preferences. i tab to the 'current sessions' and see
some things inside it that i want to remove.. i select 'remove' and
'close' then i get a dialog saying that i havent saved things. and if
it's ok to leave... now i ask myself 'saving things ?' i don't see a
save button here. so i get back and press 'apply' now i think 'all is
done now let's close the programm' i gonna press 'close' and i get the
same dialog again.

i have reported this issue as bugreport on bugzilla 1 month ago and
haven't got a reply on this yet but i think this is quite confusing.

- if i press 'apply' then i think the stuff is beeing saved since i
  don't find a save button.
- if things are beeing 'applied' as in "i have verified it now logout
  and press save sessions" then i must ask myself why thing's aren't
  saved correctly the same 2 dead programs show up again the next time i
  start up gnome.. this seriously should not happen.

applications
     |-------- desktop preferences
                       |---------- advanced
                                      |----- sessions

general issues:
===============

in a couple of gnome applications, either prefs or other things i see
that selection window only show 3-4 items but internally contain 10 and
more items (as example) i think showing 2-3 items as default is a bad
idea since people tend to make these windows taller to see more stuff at
one time (in these selection window) examples here are:

- session program
- themes program
- run program

they should be make taller to show at least 5-6 items no matter if these
items are in there or not. it also doesn't matter if you have scrollbars
or not.

gconf issues:
=============

i recently realized that when having issues with the preferences gconf
creates a .bak file of the xml file. i first realized these files some
weeks ago and found that they contained some binary crap. so i removed
them. other issue. another example let's say i create a couple of panels
on my desktop for testing issues only and put some stuff in them then
when i remove that stuff again a lot of xml files and directories remain
as orphaned files in the .gconf directory. please don't misunderstand me
gconf is for sure a good idea but these things shouldn't happen.

think it that way. i am a normal user and experiment much with gnome, i
add a panel there and here, test some stuff, add launcher, remove them
again and so on. for a short period this won't harm much but for longer
usage of the system (and everyone uses his system differently) the gconf
dir will contain a lot and i mean really a lot of orphans. for this
example here with the panel i found out about that when i enter startx
in the console and see the output of panel keys not there etc. so i
investigated more into that issues and dived into the .gconf panel
directory and saw around 100 directories with exact the same numbers and
values that were also written in my X output. as a drastical consequenze
i deleted the whole panel dir and started X again, of course i lost my
panel settings that way too but since i have only one floating panel
with a bunch of launcher in them i didn't cared. after i placed all my
launcher in the panel i looked in the .gconf dir again and saw that i
got around 1/20 of the dirs that used to be in there previously.

and this all in 2 months... i don't want to think about 1 or 2 years
keeping my homedir.

so far these are all "for me critical" issues.

hope i was helpfull.

-- 
Name....: Ali Akcaagac
Status..: Student Of Computer & Economic Science
E-Mail..: mailto:ali akcaagac stud fh-wilhelmshaven de
WWW.....: http://www.fh-wilhelmshaven.de/~akcaagaa