unity-design team mailing list archive

[Paul Sladen <ubuntu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 27 Feb 2012, Nekhelesh wrote:
> On 02/26/2012 11:57 PM, Paul Sladen wrote:
> > On Sun, 26 Feb 2012, nick rundy wrote:
> > If reboot were to be added, which other menu item would you remove?
> Why is there a need to remove a menu item to introduce Reboot option?

This, and other related examples, are about trade-offs.  The question
is, how valuable is the trade-off for the larger majority of
users?  (Do your grandparents need a top-level Reboot?  If so,
we are probably doing something wrong, and should fix that instead).

If you work through the example pros/cons in the previous email you
should be able to see objectively how your proposed addition fits with
all of the other competing priorities for top-level menu visibility.

> What's the harm in introducing an additional menu item

One could stick *everything* in a single, flat, unstructured menu, but
the rest would not be easy to use, or useful to anyone.  This is why
menus are structured, and this is why less common actions are accessed
through multiple levels of selection.[*]

> More than anything else the reboot is definitely required.

This is a fairly strong statement; the original poster noted several
other (existing) methods accessing "Reboot".

	-Paul


[*] (If you want to do flat selection processing, then you really need
something like the HUD interface, in order to help navigate and pick).