[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Windows start menu items

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 08:07:16PM +0100, Andras Timar wrote:

> A user reported the following issue:
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43259

> "The entries in LibreOffice's Start Menu folder all begin with the word
> 'LibreOffice', e.g. 'LibreOffice Base', 'LibreOffice Calc'.  Surely this word
> is superfluous, since they are entries in a folder named 'LibreOffice ...'?
> This is not just a cosmetic issue: it means that the user cannot start Impress,
> for example, simply by pressing the 'I' key in this menu folder - instead you
> need multiple presses of the 'L' or down-arrow keys, followed by return. "

> What do you think? Should we fix this ot not?

Yes and no. The Vista / Windows 7 search box in the start menu
effectively flattens that out again. I (and I feel a significant part
of users) don't navigate the hierarchy, but type what they want in the
search box (even stronger, to me this has made a graphical start menu
usable for me; I would eschew it before). The search results do not
indicate where they sit in the hierarchy, they are just shown
flat. Typing "bas" will bring up "LibreOffice Base". Typing "libr"
will show all LibreOffice entries. I feel this is the optimal user
experience with Windows Vista or 7.

It is *very* convenient for me that the product name is included
there, as I have multiple versions installed: OO.org 3.2, LibreOffice
3.4 and a daily snapshot. The entries from the daily snapshot are
labelled e.g. "LibO-dev Base". If both the released version and the
daily snapshot were named just "Base", I would have a very hard time
to choose which one to launch.

So, as a compromise to Windows XP users, maybe the released version
would have just "Base", but the daily snapshots keep the "LibO"
prefix? Windows Vista/7 users loose the ability to type "libr" and see
all LibreOffice choices, but they can navigate the hierarchy for that.

-- 
Lionel