AUG
22
2006

Kickoff Start Menu - Sneak Preview

Submitted by

As previously blogged, openSUSE 10.2 will have a redesigned KDE start menu created by the KDE and usability team at SUSE, after doing usability testing with other start menus. We now have a working prototype, code-named 'Kickoff' (started during world soccer championship, obviously), which is currently being tested with real users in the SUSE usability lab. At aKademy 2006 in Dublin, Coolo will give a Start Menu Research talk about what we learned during this project. Also, we are preparing a web-page to document our research. Click on the screenshot for the whole Kickoff sneak preview experience:

Comments

The reptile eyes following the cursor will give me nightmares ;-)

Other than that, it looks cool - but will have to play with it to find out. Can this be expected to be included in an opensuse alpha quite soon?

By jakamoko at Tue, 08/22/2006 - 16:38

As previously blogged expect it in openSUSE 10.2 Alpha 4 (due to less than two weeks).

By at Tue, 08/22/2006 - 19:38

I hope that those "big buttons" respond to hovering and not clicking, that "All programs" will trade place with "My Computer", and that "Leave" will move a bit further to the right... Also that moving the taskbar to the top (a la Apple) the big buttons will switch to the top as well... Then it'd really be the best start menu I've ever seen!

By Giacomo Lacava at Tue, 08/22/2006 - 16:44

In the current version the menu opens and the tabs switch without the need to click, so for favorites and other immediate visible stuff you need to click only once. If this stays the default we must discuss depending on the usability testing output.

About other menu positions other than at the bottom: the support for that is rather incomplete until now (and the position can only be changed by a flag in the source and recompiling). The tabs move to the top but are misrendered because the "tab-at-top" pixmaps are missing.

By at Tue, 08/22/2006 - 19:35

The annoying detail that caught my eye was that when you move in the All Programs menu, then to get to the top-level menu, you have to wait some time on the "previous level" item(s) and then, of course, scroll to the desired item in the top-level menu. I for one, often surf around in the K menu so that with just one mouse movement, the cursor is already hovering over the desired item in the top-level "programs" menu so I do not have to wait. Granted, it's probably going to be a short time necessary to pause the cursor on the return item, but nevertheless noticeable and certainly very annoying in the long run. I hope this gets resolved in a civilised manner.

By manjabes at Tue, 08/22/2006 - 19:56

Not sure what you mean with "have to wait". Unfortunately you don't see when I clicked in the movie and the animation is more smooth when not capturing software is running. The running tests showed problems for people who want to navigate through all the menu and so we are pondering how to improve their navigation behavior.

By at Thu, 08/24/2006 - 14:38

Actually, what I meant was when, for example I'm looking in the Development/GUI Designer menu in the current form of the KDE menu, and suddenly remember I need something from the System menu, then with the current menu layout, I can just "hop" from the GUI Designer submenu to the System menu with the mouse cursor whereas with the menu layout idea displayed here, I'm going to have to navigate back to the top-level menu and then forward to my item in the System menu. This is what I meant in my original post. Sorry, sometimes I have difficulties expressing myself so that others can understand too. :)

By manjabes at Sun, 08/27/2006 - 10:02

Three comments:
1) What mechinism does "Recently Used" decide the ordering of the applications?
2) What mechinism does the search used to categorize the apps into "chat" (from the movie)?
3) Maybe another tab for advanced search would be helpful? Basically integrate Beagle/Kate/whatever solidly into the Kickoff Menu.

Looks really great and I hope it's implementable.
Cheers
Ben

By bensch at Thu, 08/24/2006 - 13:08

> 1) What mechinism does "Recently Used" decide the ordering of the applications?

KRecentDocument of kdelibs (the same as for the standard KDE menu)

> 2) What mechinism does the search used to categorize the apps into "chat" (from the movie)?

That's simple, on SUSE most of these applications are in a menu category "Chat". Some of them may have also it in their application name or generic description. :-)

> 3) Maybe another tab for advanced search would be helpful?

Don't think so.

> Basically integrate Beagle/Kate/whatever solidly into the Kickoff Menu.

Clicking on "Search Index" already opens Kerry for listing all search results.

By at Thu, 08/24/2006 - 14:44

Pages