July 18, 2006

Start Menus

I generally don't use the Start menu, because of how slow it becomes, and because it's a less efficient way of accessing programs than the QuickLaunch area. I was cleaning up the Start Menu on my Windows machine today and grumbling at how installers generally seem to spray crap into here (Firefox included - although I'd like to think we keep the hierarchy fairly minimal and avoid excessive documentation links).

Microsoft has been trying to tackle this in each successive version of Windows by making the root of the Start menu more usable. With Windows XP, your most frequently or recently used programs will show up at the top level. With Windows Vista, it looks like the programs hierarchy will be displayed in the menu using a tree view, which looks like it could be a nice efficiency improvement.

One of the biggest problems is that submenus are very difficult to use - they require a lot more coordination with mouse movement since moving to the wrong place will cause the entire chain to roll up and the user to have to begin navigation all over again.

For some reason, Linux desktops seem fascinated with this model. Worse, they impose the best that highly intelligent organizational skills can do - they group programs into folders based on function. This screenshot of Freespire shows how many levels in you have to go to get to OpenOffice. Do the people that build these structures ever actually use them? The answer is probably no! (consider how easy it is to launch things from the command line...)

Just throwing a GUI onto something doesn't make it usable. In fact, it can make it more confusing. I wish some of the mainstream distributions would experiment with some new methods of launch applications aside from these baroque menu hierarchies...

 

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Comments

I use the program Launchy (http://www.launchy.net/). this way I don't have to use the Start Menu at all. I just press ALT+SPACE BAR e start typing the first letter of the application I want to use e then press enter to open it. works great and it is very easy to use.

Posted by:Jorge Silva | July 20, 2006 10:25 AM

Not to mention that most of us may not consider Word Processing under the category Business & Finance (it may also be under Home & Education but that just makes it worse). They may be using it for school work or to make a cooking list. It just doesn't make sense.

I have tended to like the Mac way of having a quick launch bar. But I think that grows too large. It would be nice to have some combination of that and the Windows smaller amount of icons (and yes I know that you can take programs off the Mac version but I can also change the hierarchy, this is more as a default way to do things)

Posted by:timfry | July 20, 2006 10:28 AM

I ignore the Start menu almost entirely. I make new toolbars (very similar to the Quicklaunch area in function) out of folders, then dock the toolbars to the top of the screen. Quite a useful and flexible little Windows feature.

Posted by:Axord | July 20, 2006 10:29 AM

The Novell guys do some interesting stuff in their SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/img/preview_screenshots/usability1.png
http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/img/preview_screenshots/usability2.png

I'm using it now and it's really nice. :)

Posted by:marcoos | July 20, 2006 10:40 AM

Yzdock works superbly on my Win Xp x64 Pro........

Posted by:Peaks | July 20, 2006 11:45 AM

When I got a Mac, a friend told me about Quicksilver (http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/) and I fell in love. With a couple keystrokes I have access to any document or application I happen to need, and the list of plugins for things like prefPanes and scripts is increasingly impressing. I don't use it for everything (I still have a lot of icons in my dock) but it's nice to have the option to.

Posted by:Ian W. | July 20, 2006 12:53 PM

Interesting. For years I used the quicklaunch bar on WinXP (And still do on my work machine).

On Ubuntu, on the other hand, I only have firefox, a terminal, and Nautilus on the panel. Everything else is via the menus.

Gnome does make it easy, though, by having three top-level menus: Applications, Places, and System.

Posted by:Maimon Mons | July 20, 2006 03:53 PM

I played around with Launchy for a while. It's actually not bad. A quick keypress, and I can search everything in the start menu regardless of hierarchy.

Posted by:Dean | July 20, 2006 11:40 PM

I've been using True Launch Bar for years, although the free version: Free Launch Bar should be adequate for most people's needs.

Having said that, I know someone who uses the classic start menu (without the recently used apps list) and he's rearranged everything into subfolders, stripped out unwanted items, and renamed things so that the path to every app has unique access keys that he has memorised. He can get to any app he wants in just a few keystrokes starting with the win key.

(OTOH, I like being able to drag and drop files on for e.g. WinMerge, so I won't be abandoning truelauchbar yet)

I think the problem is that not everyone uses apps in the same way and the quickest way for you to access thinks is always going to be one that matches your mental model of how the apps are organised. Any attempt at making it easier to find applications is best aimed at allowing people to express their own mental model as easily as possible in the computer instead of trying to find a single heirarchy that fits everyone. (For the same reason I dislike browsers that prepopulate the bookmarks menu with thier own heirachy of folders.)
This is why I like truelaunchbar/freelaunchbar, and why I suspect people like launchy as it doesn't depend on mental models or heirachys at all.

Posted by:Flenser | July 21, 2006 03:56 AM

Have you see the Novel/SLED Slab menu with integrated beagle search -
http://reverendted.wordpress.com/2006/06/17/show-me-that-new-gnome-main-menu/


i think its very nice.

Posted by:Macca | July 29, 2006 04:08 PM

fuck you

Posted by:pinga | November 20, 2006 04:01 PM

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