Gimmie background concepts
jessica...@yahoo.com
Core desktop interface elements such as menus and panels are frequently
targets for revision and replacement, owing to their importance and the
difficulty of developing a best-fit-for-the-most-users design. In a
GUADEC 2006 presentation (the notes for which are available in PDF at
the Gimmie Web site), Graveley enumerates some problems marked for
attention. Among them are the underutilization of "recently used" lists
for applications and documents, the inflexibility of system menus, and
the ambiguity of icons -- some are launchers, some are representations
of running apps, etc.
He then proceeds to appraise the usability of desktop elements from
Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix. Though he is just one in a log string of
people to do this, his conclusions are interesting. For one, Graveley
notes that desktop environments lack organizational cues to assist a
user's memory. The only one that most of us are familiar with is the
recently used documents list, the current implementations of which do
not impress Graveley.
He also objects to the inconsistent treatment of running objects -- in
some operating systems, each running window has its own representation
in the taskbar, while in others each application merits one
representation, even if it has multiple windows. Likewise, on some
systems only folders can be bookmarked, while on others apps and
documents receive the same treatment.