Hacker News Reader

Comment by dman | Hacker News Reader

One thing that threw me off in Unity was the lack of a hierarchical menu for launching applications. Is there someway to create a button that shows the hierarchical menu? btw this isnt a criticism of unity, just me trying to pick the brains of a power unity user.

View on HN

I guess that varies by the user. For me, on Ubuntu there are generally only two applications I end up launching from the panel: terminal and a browser.

The other software I use are either communicational tools (IRC and instant messaging), launched from the messaging menu, and document-specific tools (openoffice. GIMP, inkscape, gedit) that I launch either from terminal or the file manager.

I don't know how well Unity supports this workflow, as the Maverick version of it was too slow to use. But I appreciate the extra vertical space given by the global menu

Right-clicking on the 'Applications' lens presents an organized list of application types. It's only one-level deep rather than truly hierarchical but it works quite well.

I don't think a hierarchical menu is needed. What purpose would that help with? I think instead they should focus on making it easy to search in the launcher.

One cool feature they have is that it can listed installed apps as expected but also apps available in Software Center. Hopefully, someone can search for "draw" and get appropriate apps listed. Or for "GIMP" and either launch of install the app.

Hierarchical menus help with app discoverability by showing all the apps the system has to offer.

You can view all the apps installed just fine. Ubuntu, unlike many distros, doesn't install 10 of every kind of app so I don't think its necessary.

I've always found such menus more confusing than anything.

Can you guess under which menu is the termina/command line program is hidden? No, unless you know in advance that it's under "Accessories". I mean, why isn't it under "system" or "programming"? It's too hard to guess what the menu author(s) were thinking so it's always hard to guess where a certain program is.

Think of the first time you ever used a computer. I agree that once you know that there is a app called terminal, using the Hierarchical menu might not be the best way to launch/use it. But the very first time you use a computer, its useful to see "Ahh - I can do Graphics, Programming, System Administration, Games. Oh wow it even has Solitaire!". So a hybrid approach with something like Gnome-Do for power users while retaining the hierarchical menu for regular users is optimal imo. Heck a lot of power users even create application sessions and do most of their app launching automatically at startup.

Exploration, with a menu I can explore and see what is there. Search only means I can randomly type stuff in and see what happens but I never know the extents of the system.

You should check out a review if you haven't actually used the UI.

http://maketecheasier.com/ubuntu-natty-beta-1-review-screens...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com