Show Me That New GNOME Main Menu
[Update: Please refer to "Show Me That Updated GNOME Main Menu" to see the latest info on the Main Menu, including a video.]
[Audio: There is an interview with developer Jimmy Krehl about this topic on Novell Open Audio.]
[Follow-up: I have posted a follow-on called "Customizing the Main Menu" to answer some questions posted on digg.com.]
[Note: Since tuxmachines.org seems to have picked up this post, I should clarify up front that I do not know whether this has been or will be accepted into the main source tree of gnome.org. This is just the menu that I have been showing in public demonstrations of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. The possible implication that it is indeed the stated direction of gnome.org is not intended. As I am heading to GUADEC next week, this clarification may spare me much flailing from many of my colleagues who are deeply invested in the health of the GNOME community. 21:46 MDT 17-06-06]
A lot of the people I have spoken to at various shows and events have wanted to see more of GNOME’s new Main Menu which Novell aims to deliver with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. The newly overhauled navigation resulted from studies in Novell’s desktop usability labs. (See BetterDesktop.org for some of the information on the findings, methods, etc.) So let’s take a moment to examine it.
The menu is accessed from a single button, labelled “Computer.” There is no “My Computer” on the desktop, as our testing found that newer computer users expected anything but a file system browser to come up when they clicked on the one on Windows. We also found that having a name like “Start” (as Windows does) confuses users when presented with tasks like “shut down your computer.” Nevertheless, a lot of users look to the bottom left for a single all-access button. Hence the Computer button. That’s how the origins of the Computer button have been explained to me.
The Main Menu that pops up from the the Computer button contains:
- Search linked to Beagle
- System tools that offer the functions that users need most often
- Disk space and network connection status indicators
- A selector for “Favorite Applications”, “Recently Used Applications”, “Recent Documents”
- A “More Applications…” button which takes you to the Applications Browser that I showed in a recent post.
So, I provide two screens shots of the menu, one of Favorites, and the other of Recently Used Applications.
(Apologies about the layout. I have not had a chace to work out the kinks in my WordPress template.)
For a second there I thought you were going to do a “show us your GNOE Main Menu” thing.
Comment by nbornstein — June 17, 2006 @ 7:27 am
על התפריט הראשי החדש של GNOME ב-SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10…
חברת נובל (חדשות) מיישמת מסקנות ולקחים מסקרי ומבחני שמישות (חדשות) שהיא עורכת - בעיקר בסביבת GNOME, שול…
Trackback by לינמגזין — June 17, 2006 @ 8:16 am
[...] Show Me That New GNOME Main Menu – odhalenie nového menu v GNOME [...]
Pingback by Linky na víkend 14 na depi.sk - IT & Life Weblog — June 18, 2006 @ 12:50 am
that looks interesting … is it going to work on other *nixes like ubuntu ?
Comment by tgfop — June 18, 2006 @ 12:55 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
Pingback by UbuntuOS » Blog Archive » Show Me That New GNOME Main Menu — June 18, 2006 @ 1:01 am
[...] GNOME’s New Main Menu Revealedread more | digg story [...]
Pingback by Madrefocaine! - Blog » Show Me That New GNOME Main Menu — June 18, 2006 @ 1:48 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
Pingback by Snakey’s WeBlog » Blog Archive » Show Me That New GNOME Main Menu — June 18, 2006 @ 3:19 am
[...] http://reverendted.wordpress.com/2006/06/17/show-me-that-new-gnome-main-menu/ [...]
Pingback by penk - Keep on rockin’ in the free world » Blog Archive » 本日書籤 — June 18, 2006 @ 2:34 pm
Weird. Not sure if I like this or not. I’d have to see it in action. It’s nice and colorful, but it seems kind of big — not to sound negative. Development is always a good thing. The current menus in Gnome are kind of boring. This just seems so big.
It does remind me of the XP menu. Sorry if that is insulting. I’m just being honest. Nevertheless, it looks colorful.
Comment by Brent — June 19, 2006 @ 3:04 am
Lovely…
A doubt though (since I cant try it yet), do we have to *click* the More Apps button to access all apps or is it on-hover open ? Kinda reduces irritation…
Comment by Qwerty Maniac — June 20, 2006 @ 12:38 am
QM: See my later post on Customizing Main Menu. –T
Comment by Ted Haeger — June 20, 2006 @ 5:01 am
[...] Anyway, the new Gnome main menu is the topic of this post. Reverend Ted posted some screenshots of the new Gnome main menu to his blog the other day. There was a lot of unexpected interest in the screenshots too, as seen by Reverend Ted’s blog stats graph. [...]
Pingback by Slackware Blog » Blog Archive » New Main Menu for Gnome — June 21, 2006 @ 7:18 am
It’s interesting, but ,a href=”http://linuxgeekboy.wordpress.com/2006/06/29/novell-linux-and-vista-oh-and-boy-george/”>a bit too much like Vista for my liking.
Comment by Rees — June 29, 2006 @ 8:45 am
pretty sweet…
Comment by bennyp — July 2, 2006 @ 7:47 pm
[...] GNOME’s New Main Menu Revealedread more | digg story [...]
Pingback by Linux Unix » Show Me That New GNOME Main Menu — September 1, 2006 @ 5:25 am
Is it just me, or does that look really similar to Vista’s start menu? Either way, it’s a very nice menu. I hope it makes it into GNOME
Comment by dosnlinux — November 5, 2006 @ 7:49 pm
[...] I installed and setup NetworkManager on my desktop yesterday - works beautifully! I’ve been using it on my laptop (running FC6) for a while, but I’ve never tried it in Gentoo before. I had to install it as a dep for slab (http://reverendted.wordpress.com/2006/06/17/show-me-that-new-gnome-main-menu/), which I decided to give a go… It doesn’t work very well to be honest… I might try it again someday, but meh. Hmm… I wonder if it works under FC6 easily… [...]
Pingback by welp’s blog » Hmm… — November 7, 2006 @ 11:42 am
[...] New “kickoff” KDE and “Slab” GNOME menus [...]
Pingback by OpenSuSE 10.2 Released » Spin Ink — December 7, 2006 @ 3:14 pm
Where can I download it?
Comment by xactive — December 23, 2006 @ 1:20 pm
xactive [19]:
During GUADEC 2006, Novell submitted all the work on this menu into GNOME as a module called “slab.” You should be able to search GNOME CVS for “slab” to get the latest sources. It is now included in openSUSE 10.2, and it has been packaged for multiple other distributions, including Fedora, Ubuntu, and many others.
–Ted
Comment by Ted Haeger — December 24, 2006 @ 7:27 am
Its awful!! I hate it!! SUSE 10.2 is such a good release too, but why oh why oh why did you copy XP?!? And, no option to switch it off!!!
HELP!
Comment by blah — January 19, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
blah [21]:
Right-click the Computer button and choose “Remove from Phanel” from the menu. Once you have removed the button, you can right-click the panel where the Computer button used to be, and choose “Add to Panel…” The item you want to add is called “Menu Bar,” which is the old main menu from Gnome.
–T
Comment by Ted Haeger — January 19, 2007 @ 11:27 pm
[...] technical advancements, but also continuous improvements in the look and feel of the desktop. The new Main Menu for Gnome that debuted with SLED10 showed how studying user interaction with the desktop can result in a [...]
Pingback by Show Me that Updated Gnome Main Menu « Open Source Advocacy with Reverend Ted — February 14, 2007 @ 2:39 pm
[...] technical advancements, but also continuous improvements in the look and feel of the desktop. The new Main Menu for Gnome that debuted with SLED10 showed how studying user interaction with the desktop can result in a [...]
Pingback by NOVELL: Cool Blogs » Blog Archive » Show Me that Updated Gnome Main Menu — February 14, 2007 @ 3:40 pm
[...] (in openSUSE) unter den Programmnamen sogar kurze Beschreibungen der Programme - siehe z.B. die von hier entliehen Grafiken. [...]
Pingback by I'm a Mac - and I'm a PC - Hi, I'm Linux! - Seite 7 - Apfeltalk — April 12, 2007 @ 1:55 am
And if you want a “My Computer” icon on your desktop add it yourself.
Right-click on empty desktop, choose “Create Launcher…”
Name=My Computer (or whatever)
Command= nautilus computer///:
Click on the icon to choose a suitable one, eg /usr/share/pixmaps/system.png
OK
Comment by obscuredavid — May 9, 2007 @ 10:29 am
ubuntu can do it. but i need some else, may like vista menu. Any solution?
Comment by artha — August 8, 2007 @ 10:34 am
artha [27]:
I really don’t have any suggestion for you. There likely are hacks available, but unless they are backed by a committed development team (or an insanely dedicated individual), chances are that it would be…well, hackish.
–T
Comment by Ted Haeger — August 10, 2007 @ 8:09 am
[...] كيفية ربط الـ Application Browser بها, و هي عبارة عن تطبيق خاص بـ gnome-main-menu يقوم بعرض كافة البرامج المثبتة لديك على توزيعتك في [...]
Pingback by kiba-dock و متصفح التطبيقات « Black X — October 10, 2007 @ 5:16 pm
Oooh i hate this new panel since it looks to much like that other OS.
Thank you very much Ted Haeger (Jan 19) for your explanation.
i removed the panel and now im very happy again with me sue linuex.
Comment by henk — February 19, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
@henck [30]: Happy to oblige.
Comment by Ted Haeger — February 19, 2008 @ 1:27 pm