On Tue, 2013-02-19 at 11:29 -0500, jonc wrote:
There's a problem with providing access to executables that no
one has
solved very well. A modern platform -- Linux, Windows, OS X --
contains hundred, if not thousands, of executables that a user may, at
some point, want to locate and launch.
The usual approach has been menus. This works fine within limits.
But, when the number of menu entries exceeds some threshold, the menu
becomes cumbersome and unwieldy.
The "screens of big icons" approaches in iOS, in the Launch Pad of OS
X, and the App Overview in Gnome Shell, are really menus with text
entries replaced or supplemented by icons.
Going from a small menu, that may expand into more than one column, to
more than one screenfull (for the basic setup), that expands into
several screenfulls of icons that you can only see a small portion of at
any time. The search function tries to sidestep that problem, but
brings new ones. User has to know what to type, either the name, or an
associated keyword that the programmer may have filled in. And the fun
tablet interface meant for touch screens, where one doesn't have a touch
screen, involves using both mouse and keyboard, and heaven help someone
actually using a touch screen table who has to keep on calling up an
onscreen keyboard to use the search gadget.
Congratulations, someone has actually made a user interface device that
is worse than the mouse.
--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I
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