Novell's Desktop Advances - The Better Desktop Initiative

I am using Ubuntu 6.06 with Gnome patched to 2.14.2.

Click on Applications/Games
Try moving an icon to another category.

I can drag it to the desktop or on the bar, but I must use the Alacarte menu editor to do anything to the pulldown menus. Alacarte is a solution to a problem that should have never existed.

The real-world problem comes when you want to install a non-distro application, like Stellarium, and you may think that you can just drag the icon up there, but I can't; the menus won't open. I've seen this lack of function on Fedora, but I was informed that it was unique to Fedora, now Ubuntu does the same thing, so I think that either Gnome's menus need work, or their system is too difficult to impliment in distros.

Let's see, I can add or remove applications from either the Application menu or the system menu, but I have to be in the file browser to add or remove a custom "Place" in statial.

I've noticed that there is a commom element to both these issues: the pulldown menu system. Why on earth are the pulldown menus so obstanant. The menubar itself is nice, but the pulldowns act like they don't want to work for or with me, they just want to do their own thing : ) I can't reorder them in any way. I wanted to put a "Science" menu in there, for Stellarium. I had to use Allacart. If I had an office, I might not want my workers seeing the "Share" menu there. It's not like I can just right-click it and delete it, or add it back without a lot of fuss.

The Linux desktop user is crushed between the people who want you to do everything from the command line, and the GUI designer who thinks you shoudn't have too much power.

If I didn't care abour Gnome, I would have spent my time writing.

Bigger issues? The Gnome pulldown menus will be the first things the user clicks on.

There will always be a few programs that don't fit into a specific category, or times when the user needs to place certain applications together.

The menus shouldn't be locked down by a lack of functionality/use/method, but by the users permissions.

The Gnome desktop just needs to work. It should do the things you think it should, not prevent you from customizing it.

As Gnome becomes more popular that 1% may represent thousands of users.

The lack of functionality in regard to users being able to edit / customise their menus has be 'debated' in this forum ad nauseum since the demise of this function beginning with the release of the 2.x series.

That and a number of other features which went the same way.

Yet requests for this functionality have be by and largely ignored by developers, hence the advent of third party solutions such as alacarte.

The current approach of a feature starved desktop ostensibly to avoid user confusion, may be suitable for corporate desktops where adminstrators need to prevent users from 'messing' things up.

But what of the noncorporate user or those new to Linux, that are used to being able to edit menus for example, in MS Windows?

If they choose a distro that is GNOME oriented they will most likely be dissapointed at the lack of functionality in this area. First impressions count.

Off topic here, recursive permissions in Nautilus have also been requested for a number of years, reportedly this has been listed as bug for some 6 years. There is a forum item, that mentions that this has now been addressed, the approach here is that it will need to be enabled through gconf, (a sensible precaution), one has to ask why this took so long to implement though!

Check this link http://gnomedesktop.org/node/2706

Also off topic is the GNOME print dialogue.

This recently was raised in the Ubuntu forums where a GNOME user lamented the lack of ability to choose the option off printing either odd or even numbered pages only. A user of one of the other desktops used in one of Ubuntus derivitaves responded & provided a screenshot of a print dialogue they have access to which supports this feature as well as a host of other features, (if supported by the printer), for example full duplex printing.

Some may point out the lack of adequate driver support provided by manufacturers. This is not in dispute. What is at issue is that the functionality, (and this may well be hardware specific), is currently available to users of other desktops.

Presumably attention will finally be directed to this for the upcoming release, long overdue.

Back to the menus, they still take a long time to load after when accessed the first time after booting. A minor annoyance perhaps, as the menu loads crisply each and everytime afterwards, but an annoyance nevertheless.

This still occurs despite the huge effort that went into optimising GNOME for the current release, Granted that this effort was not in vain as the desktop is definately more responsive, on my machine at least. Credit given where credit is due.

This drive to keep the desktop 'simple' so as to avoid 'confusion' amongst users is somewhat overzealous, as features that are common place on other platforms and in other desktops are unavailable, (menu editing) and or poorly implemented (print dialogue).

Not to take it away from the GNOME devs, they do a great job. There are however matters that users have been putting forward for some time now, (on this forum), in some cases for years that have gone unheeded.

A quote from the forum items header, "GNOME developers care deeply about the user experience, and as a project we have always worked hard to make common tasks easy, without making advanced tasks impossible."

Is not the capability of menu editing a common task? At least for users of other platforms / desktop environments it is anyway.

My final point is why does, it take usability studies from Corporate entities such as Novell and Sun, for action to take place, when users comments and requests on this forum, menu editing once again comes to mind, have gone largely unheeded.

A final quote from the article regarding the Novell Better Desktop Initiative.

Federico Mena Quintero, the maintainer of several GNOME modules and GTK +'s core developer, says that the Better Desktop Initiative has "made developers very aware that the assumptions they make are sometimes completely disconnected from users."

Source, http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/6256/1/

Something that a number of posters on this forum have been saying for years now.

> So, the problem isn't needing corporate leadership to modify Gnome's
> usability, the problem is that some Gnome develpers sometime just
> don't listen to the users comments

Please be generous enough to consider some alternative possibilities:
- The developers don't have enough time to do what you need right now.
- The developers also have to fix some other problems that are even more important, to other users.
- The problem is more difficult than it appears to you, and doing it wrong could create serious problems.

Thanks, but I had considered the implications before posting.

This IS Gnomedesktop.org isn't it? I thought that Gnome users would feel safe to comment on issues affecting the Gnome desktop here.

So then, I shouldn't be concearn becasue a company that can't even update their icon to the current theme, wants to lead the Gnome desktop?

Expose is mearly a fix for parentless windows, on a single workspace desktop. They have sucessfully fixed a symptom--not the two problems.