KDE4: actions menu

Tuesday, March 13. 2007

Task driven menu for applications.
Have a "actions" menu in every kde application containing the most common actions you can do with it. ex. Amarok: "Play Media", "Play Audiocd", "Quit". When using the desktop menubar the actions menu gets renamed to the application name. See my previous post to see why that is useful.
Every user is different so it could change the order of the actions menu depending on the users usage of those actions. It can even insert actions that are not there by default. I guess most items in a well designed menu can end up in the actions menu. The developers have to tag menu items as actions but only a few of them (most used or default) end up in the actions menu. And, since automation seems to be bad usablility wise (according to Ellen), users and developers are able to pin items to the menu.
If you are shouting "this is similar to XP's start menu or the Kickoff menu". You are right, only on a single application level and much finer grained.

In Amarok we had the problem that users weren't finding the features we worked so hard to invent and implement just about every release. This actions menu could help the discoverability of otherwise hard to find but wonderful features without bothering them with things like "tip of the day" or that damn paperclip.

Comments are welcome

Posted by Bart Cerneels in shanachie at 13:57 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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hi!
I dreamed with an app that merges a simplified kdcop and kcron (influenced by a similar mac app).
I think a simplified dcop interface (aka actions) would allow users to automate many of their tasks, and optimize their use of the computer (more concise service menus and klipper's actions (and strigi and krunner), personalized shortcuts)...

#1 adrian on 2007-03-13 14:46 (Reply)

Best solution for tip dialogs for me is non intrusive dialogs.

Vista did this, and it is pretty smart. They fade away after you start using the app. I always meant to do this with amarok but I'm lazy.

#2 mxcl (Homepage) on 2007-03-13 15:18 (Reply)

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