On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 11:36, Matthew Paul Thomas
<mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The items in the status menus are shortcuts. Sometimes someone will go
into the clock menu to change something about the time, or the sound
menu to change something about the sound, etc, before realizing that the
menu itself doesn't contain the setting they want. But that's okay,
because at the end of the menu there's a shortcut to the relevant
settings pane.
That's precisely why i think it would be great to have 1 configuration shortcut on the bottom of the Session Menu.
That shortcut should open the Power Preferences, perfectly corresponding with the vertically opposite end of the menu, which is decorated with the Power symbol.
This way, the power symbol on top of the Session Menu would make actual sense for the first time imo, since "Power Settings" would be the first item in that menu actually employing the word Power. I can't remember the last time i opened Power Preferences from the "Battery Menu" aka "Power Menu", besides it tends to disappear when the power cord is connected..
The most difficult thing for a user to abstract is the combined function of a menu. Is it a category indicator, we'd better not leave it up to the user, to decide, what category is meant.
Session Menu and Power Preferences have more in common to me than the "Charging Indicator", which as mentioned above is not even persistent by default.
I imagine opening a Session Menu > "Session Preferences", one day containing the vital parts of Power Preferences, Screensaver Preferences and one or two options that could be regarded as Session Preferences. I also believe that it would make sense to have Preferences Windows and dialogs always open in the same position: snapped to the top-right corner. The current behaviour is that they appear center stage, and that is a bit confusing quite often.
I'd also say that one categorie's preferences replace another's, so that there are never two preferences windows open simultaneously.
Once THAT works, there's again less clutter and changing something about the preferences of some part of Ubuntu would feel more interactive and more menu-like than the current implementation.
There's a lot more to say, but i think it's best kept back until this topic proves worthy of discussion.