Martin Notes » desktop http://martinnotes.com Open source in real life Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:44:49 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 GUI improvement http://martinnotes.com/2008/08/07/gui-improvement/ http://martinnotes.com/2008/08/07/gui-improvement/#comments Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:40:05 +0000 Martin http://martinnotes.com/?p=37 Why are we still working with menus in our desktops? It’s just about the most stupid way to give access to features in an application. Menus don’t give the user the possibility to ‘ask’ an application if a feature is available. If a feature is hidden somewhere deep the user might even never find it.

I’m pretty sure interaction designers thought a lot on how to replace menus. But I still see the concept coming back in every application an every website.

Looking forward to the web 3.0 ideas: why don’t we at least have a way to search in the features that an application provides? Why can’t I search in a menu? Better then that: why can’t I search for a feature? I’d like to enter in a word processor: “paper size” and then I want to see the dialog where I can set the paper size. I don’t want to enter the help, search, and get an explanation where I can do what I just found! That’s how we had to solve it in the 80′s, but applications should be able to do a bit more now.

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