Re: [Usability] [Ayatana] The Future of Window Borders, Menu Bars, and More

[Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net>]

 On 08/09/2010 05:56 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
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> Ryan Peters wrote on 07/08/10 20:12:
> > On 08/07/2010 08:46 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > ...
> > > In this scenario someone is using (for example) Calculator, Banshee,
> > > Empathy, Gmail, Amazon, CNN, Farmville, the Gundam AnimeSuki Forum,
> > > and Hulu respectively. That they are using Firefox for 70% of these
> > > things does not mean it is useful or informative for "Firefox" to
> > > appear in the corner of the screen while doing them -- just as, for
> > > example, "Gnome" or "Xorg" or "Ubuntu" or "GNU" or "Linux" shouldn't.
> > > Taking up that much screen space with any of those brands may well be
> > > good for their vendors, but it is not relevant to user goals.
> > Of course it's relevant. People know they're in a web browser (whatever
> > they'd call it, most likely "The Internet" or "The Fox-thing"). because
> > they can go to different websites in it. They know that they use /only
> > one application/ to do so.
> How do you know they know that? Since you were mistaken last time, I
> think the burden of proof is on you now. :-)
>
> Since Safari 1.0 in 2003 and Firefox 1.0 in 2004, browser vendors have
> increasingly competed on unobtrusiveness -- on how little they can
> impose on your mental model. Browsers used to have branded throbbers,
> now they don't. They used to have separate toolbars and address bars,
> now they don't. They used to have large distinctive toolbar icons, now
> they don't. They used to have status bars, now they usually don't. And
> vendors have been experimenting with ways to let you extract Web sites
> as standalone windows with no browser chrome at all. When you're using
> applications like Amazon, Gmail, and Hulu, it's becoming less and less
> obvious that you're using a browser to run them. (The "Firefox" button
> is a big outlier from that pattern.)
While browsers might not be focused on branding, that branding is still 
there. My point, however, isn't the branding, but the fact that there is 
a brand. If we treated every web browser as "web browser" or every email 
client as "email client", how would people tell the difference between 
them? Branding, with different icons and application names, helps this 
issue, and there's a healthy level of branding exposure we need to find. 
If the window borders didn't have the application title, the Application 
Menu, with the icon as well as the name (so people can more easily 
recognize the name), fixes this problem because you can tell what 
application you have open no matter what window is focused, its 
contents, or what the window title is.
> >                              If they want options relevant to the
> > application, they open the Application menu. Shoving it in a menu with
> > other window-specific options would be unorganized and confusing (It
> > isn't to you or me because we're used to it. Think of the new users or
> > people like my mom, for example). After they figure out that GNOME has
> > application-specific things in an application-specific place, they pick
> > it up quickly and remember that. Unlike other menus that are structured
> > differently for every application, the contents of the application menu
> > are almost always the same. It makes more sense for "Preferences" to go
> > under the "Application" menu than a "Tools" or "Edit" menu, doesn't it?
> Yes, it does -- as I said, that's probably the best example of an
> application-global item. But I think there are too few good examples to
> warrant the menu's existence.
>
> > ...
> > > If you have a document open in Microsoft Word and a spreadsheet open
> > > in Microsoft Excel, and you choose "Quit" from Excel's application
> > > menu on the Mac (or "Exit" from its Office button on Windows), the
> > > spreadsheet will close. But if you had the same document open in
> > > OpenOffice.org Writer, and the same spreadsheet open in OpenOffice.org
> > > Calc, and you chose "Quit" from OpenOffice.org's app menu in Gnome
> > > Shell, the spreadsheet would close, and -- surprise! -- the document
> > > would close too.
> > >
> > > Why? Because Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel happen to be coded as
> > > separate applications, but OpenOffice.org Writer and OpenOffice.org
> > > Calc happen to be coded as a single application. Given how far off you
> > > were in thinking people knew what a Web browser was, please excuse me
> > > for not taking your word for it when you claim that people "know that
> > > [OpenOffice.org] is all the same program".
> > >
> > > The app menu does not introduce this problem, but it does perpetuate
> > > it and enshrine it. And "Quit" is given as the first example of an
> > > item justifying the menu's existence at all.
> > Bad example. The window still has a close document option (and if it
> > isn't labeled as such it's a bug in the application itself, not GNOME).
> > People will learn that the application menu quits everything (which is
> > just as easy to learn how to use Windows or Mac, if not easier), and it
> > is a very useful function to have. Might I note that GNOME Shell and
> > OpenOffice.org are by no means "complete" and are open for bug reports.
> > Reporting this to both would be a logical step to take.
> That doesn't address my point at all. That "Close" exists does not
> excuse the inconsistent redundancy (it makes it even less excusable),
> it's nothing to do with how "complete" OpenOffice.org is (it's behaved
> like this for over *ten years* now), and you're assuming the question of
> what "quits everything" means.
There's still a close button on the window or the document (which is 
located right below the bottom-right corner). People know that documents 
are separated into individual windows, and closing the window simply 
closes the document. As Apoorva Sharma said in another message, the quit 
function in the application menu could also include the name of the 
application ("Quit OpenOffice.org" for example) so it would be more 
obvious to new users what the function does.
> > ...
> > > >              to reduce confusion among new users and making the
> > > > desktop seem more integrated and organized.
> > > Those are new claims that you're making without evidence.
> > Apparently you don't have problems finding things if your vision is
> > cluttered with objects. I do. I like to have as little visual clutter
> > as possible because the interface seems cleaner and it's easier to
> > find what I'm looking for.
> You're the one advocating an extra object. I'm advocating its abolition.
It's not the extra object, it's the consistency it brings. After 
installing a new application from whatever package manager I use, if it 
has preferences they're always in totally different places. Under a 
button with an icon of tools, the Edit menu, the Tools menu, some other 
menu that's exclusive to the application, and various other possible 
places. It drives me crazy sometimes because it's inconsistent and I'd 
rather not have to look at all. The Application Menu fixes this problem 
by allowing me and other new users to assume the location of Preferences 
or Help or About, making it easier to use.
> > Shell does this perfectly in my opinion, and compared to something
> > like Ubuntu where all of the icons are shoved close together in one
> > corner of the screen, it's a God-send (whose idea was it anyway to
> > put icons for drastically different things all in one corner of the
> > screen?).
> > ...
> What do you mean by "the icons"? Icons for what?
I mean indicators and windicators and so on. One of the reasons I don't 
exclusively use ubuntu anymore is this. You have System Indicators, 
Application Indicators, and soon-to-come, "Windicators" on the same 
corner of the screen. These indicators have icons, and they're all in 
the same corner of the screen. While "putting all of the icons in the 
same place" seems to work fine on paper, in practice it only clutters up 
the corner of the screen (as well as the clock, sitting in-between 
everything). It's a bit of an "Icon overload" in my opinion, and Shell 
fixes this by moving them to their own portions of the screen.

But I digress, this doesn't have to do with the application menu and I'm 
sorry for going off-topic.
> Cheers
> - -- 
> Matthew Paul Thomas
> http://mpt.net.nz/
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