After much debate on both the desktop developers mailing list, and the control center mailing list, we’ve decided that GNOME 2.18 will ship with the existing menu system as default.
We had hoped that the shell using code from Novell would be ready in time for 2.18, but there are still some serious usability and accessibility problems that need to be addressed.
As such, Denis made the change yesterday to use the menu system by default. However, if you would like to use the control center shell, it can easily be made available by using the Alacarte menu editor to make it visible in your menus.
That’s so twisted on many levels. After using the shell on my openSuse for a while there isn’t going back. The reason is usability. The old traditional Gnome system is plain horrible.
Gnome 2.18 should be stalled until it has the mission critical features ready. Instead of acting sane splitting hair and arguing about moot points won again I see. Open source projects at their best I guess *smirk*
“Gnome 2.18 should be stalled until it has the mission critical features ready. Instead of acting sane splitting hair and arguing about moot points won again I see. Open source projects at their best I guess *smirk*”
I dont want to wait until Gimmie is ready. Since if you think the idea of the slab system you end up with Gimmie…
Wow, this is some controversial subject, making people react quite strongly (see comment above).
There is but one reason I personally like the menu system better: It makes preferences look less like a Real Program. Let me explain.
The difference is between my gf wanting to tweak a setting, going to the menu, selecting ‘keyboard’ or whatever and have just the dialog to get confused over, or going to the menu, selecting ‘control center’ or whatever because that sounds like it should contain the keyboard settings, and thinking ‘oh dear, better get theo…’ because a big window pops up with a search field, categories, and so forth.
Me personally, as a geek, I could live with either. My gf, my parents, they *hate* Real Programs.
Same issue with the new slab menu thing btw.
I really think this was a poor move on GNOME’s part.
The Control Center is usable. Anyone claiming that it _isn’t_ needs to remember that the traditional layout is _less_ usable.
What makes more sense to you? Two generally ambiguous categories whose scheme only makes sense to an advanced user, or several categories using recognizable words so that anyone can find what they’re looking for?
That’s what I thought.
This is really good news. I’m happy this sluggish and useless new application didn’t make it, and will keep my good old working – and much usable, thanks – menus.
Sweet! This is truly great. The Control Center is completely useless to me. By the time it loads up, I frequently lose my train of thought about what setting I was planning to change. And, because it doesn’t swallow child windows, it leads to a bigger window management headache. Worse still, in the search mechanism, the entries don’t have enough keyword tags so searches frequently fail unless you know the exact name of the thing you are looking for.
I much prefer new the gnome-control-center over the old menu system.
Oh well, here is to hoping for .20.
The best feature of the new builds of GNOME: bringing back the old menus. Please guys, do not ever remove these menus. I usually have a drawer in the panel to launch these and I was surprised when they were removed.
If GNOME developers want to spend time on the control-center, fine. Work should be done integrating some of these one use applets together.
Please do not remove these menus in the future. Give administrators and users the option to hide them if they don’t want to see them.
I promise, if these menus are ever removed, i’m done with GNOME.
It may seem trivial, but I am tired of things I like being tossed out for some half-baked product. (Which is the control-center)
Great. I always feel lost when using control-center. The menu is much more usable with keyboard only and hides entries in categories you aren’t interested in.