unity-design team mailing list archive

["balint777@xxxxxxxxx" <balint777@xxxxxxxxx>]

Very good reasoning. Absolutely agree.

2012/6/17 Connor Carney <ccarney@xxxxxxxxx>

> > Now, I would really like to hear the *reasoning* against having
> > default categories. Why it is preferable to let the burden to the user
> > do all the job for each new applications he/she installs (and all the
> > installed applications that come by default). Sure, it is impossible
> > to find a good categorization that fits everyone. But we can find a
> > reasonable initial one. The current one is good enough for me.
>
>
> Display a flat list of all application launchers, excluding system
> tools and file viewers.  Here's my reasoning:
>
> The default applications list should exclude system tools (because
> they aren't applications from an end-user perspective) and file
> viewers (because they aren't useful when launched directly).  Ubuntu,
> then, comes OOTB with fourteen apps that belong in the launcher --
> aisleriot, calculator, gedit, brasero, empathy[1], firefox,
> gwibber[1], libreoffice, mahjongg, rhythmbox, shotwell, simplescan,
> thunderbird and transmission.
>
> Using the XDG categorization scheme, those applications get divided
> into six categories; some categories have only one application.  The
> small number of items per category significantly diminishes their
> usefulness, and there's no sensible way of consolidating them.
>
> Categories are also much harder to pick out of a list than
> applications.  Applications have recognizable, definitive branding.
> Categories lack such branding: the spinning fox is always firefox,
> while a globe could mean many things besides "Internet".  For
> user-installed applications, the branding is extremely prominent in
> the software center, so we can expect users to recognize it.
>
> The dash can display 24 icons per page at it's smallest.  On a 1080p
> monitor it can display up to 84 items.  That's plenty of room to fit
> the default apps plus several more installed from the software center.
>  As long as a flat list of all applications fits comfortably on the
> screen, a user can pick an application out of the list without needing
> to interact with the computer at all [2].
>
>
>
> [1] The presence of empathy and gwibber on this list is questionable
> since they come with system branding (the "chat" and "broadcast"
> features of the messaging menu) rather than application branding.
>
> [2] Reducing the amount of input is more important than you might
> think.  Every output->input cycle requires an inexperienced user to
> shift his attention from the screen to the mouse and back.  If the
> entire list is already on the screen, choosing one is a simple task.
> If he must point at a category and then choose an application, it
> involves multiple subtasks.
>
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-- 
*Csonka Bálint* @913