Start Menu Blogging

Two days ago Miguel de Icaza blogged about the revised Main Menu of the GNOME desktop in the upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Desktop Service Pack 1 and how it and the KDE Kickoff start menu inspired each other. In the update section he adds some very familiar sounding anecdotes: during the usability study done in Germany with amongst others Microsoft Vista Beta 2 we also found that most users don't recognize a "Search" input box at the bottom. And that users have problems to find its shutdown button which really turns off their machine (iirc a video with this was shown at Akademy). So same findings and wondering if Microsoft has done their homework with the Vista start menu.

Today Marco Barisione followed up with a response what he liked about the new Main Menu and what not, adding mockups and wishes how to improve it: among them "no buttons behaving as tabs", the dislike of an external application browser and wanting to have search-results displayed in-place: this sound almost as he wants Main Menu to become more like what Kickoff as of openSUSE 10.2 delivers. :-)