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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.)
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.
