On Wednesday 23 November 2011, Calvin Morrison wrote: > On 23 November 2011 19:58, Tiago Marques <tiagomnm@...> wrote: > > > On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Calvin Morrison <mutantturkey@...>wrote: > > > >> Hello all, > >> > >> I have for some time been hacking around with Kickoff, looking to > >> improve it, and make it definitely more TDEish. > >> > >> While it is not our default menu, we do provide it built in. Therefore > >> I think it needs to be as good as it can get. > >> > >> I also think it is of the utmost importance that we follow the TDE HCI > >> model that Tim drew up. This means that some things in the current > >> Kickoff layout are not good. > >> > >> If you look at this link: http://imgur.com/h6xhB > >> > >> I've drawn arrows and other things in reference to what I am explaining > >> here, also I've drawn numbers so it's easy to compare. > >> > >> 1) The width of kickoff takes up much to much real estate, and wasted > >> real estate. My estimate is that we can shave off a good 50-60 pixels > >> off of it to reduce screen space with almost no sacrifice. > >> > >> 2) We need to remove the "search" text field. It does nothing, it is > >> not helpful, it is not intuitive, it is just a waste of space. Remove > >> it, and make the actual search area larger. To make it clear that it > >> is a search bar, we can do like the regular KMenu search does and have > >> grayed out letters saying "search..." > >> > >> 3) We also could either A. remove the search icon entirely or B. > >> shrink it to stop wasting space. Also currently this is a mng file > >> (basically a dead format that never took off). the animation doesn't > >> work. hopefully I can just use a regular pixmap instead. > >> > >> 4) in line with the HCI model on the Etherpad, large buttons are bad. > >> this is not a tablet, and tablet interfaces are not optimal. We can > >> shrink the tabs a bit, (probably 8-10 pixels each) this fits in with > >> 1) to reduce the width. > >> > >> 5) I say we remove this bottom bar entirely. KMenu does not have it. I > >> do not think we need to know what user is and what host. I do not > >> think it is worth the real estate. Also we definitely don't need a > >> link to the website. If people want to go to our website, they will. > >> They don't need a button on the main menu. > >> > >> 6) the kickoff logout dialog is this: "logout?" where as the KMenu > >> shows up a nice dialog with options to hibernate etc. Either barrow > >> this from KMenu or add options for each of these in the menu. > >> > >> Thoughts? Suggestions? Does anyone actually use kickoff? > >> > >> Calvin Morrison > >> > >> > > Hi Calvin, > > > > Most definitely think these are all excellent proposals. Kickoff > > definitely needs some improvements, though it would be good to also > > brainstorm something for a better navigation on the app selection tab - as > > it is very slow to use currently. > > > > Best regards, > > Tiago Marques > > > > I would love some ideas regarding this. Do you have any suggestions > regarding this? > > Calvin > Hi Calvin, While I don't like (or use) Kickoff myself, if we must have it ;-) I think that all of your suggestions for improving it are good ones. I would also like to add a couple of my own. Since I have never seen the point of having 'favourites' in the menu (it is quicker to click on desktop icons or icons on Kicker) I would like to have the option to not display the favourites tab. The same goes for the history tab (I assume that 'history' means recently used documents). I think that the search field should look and behave the same as any other search fields in Trinity, like (for example) the one in Konqueror. That's it for now. Thanks for your efforts. Richard. -- Stupidity is its own reward.