Gnome system menu should be better organized

Bug #387830 reported by Agostino Russo
16
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
One Hundred Papercuts
Won't Fix
Undecided
Unassigned
gnome-menus (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

The System menu is not intuitive, items are organized mostly by scope (preferences vs administration) moreover there is a third menu in Applications > System Tools. It would be interesting to ask users in which of the 3 menus they would expect to find a given application.

Applications that modify system-wide settings already require privilege escalation, so there is no need to reiterate the concept in the menu structure. Moreover this results in a lot of items grouped in a few menus, making it even harder to find what one wants.

It would be more user friendly to have items grouped by task instead. Gnome-control-center already follows a similar scheme, and its groups could be used as a starting point.

I would personally recommend the following groups:

Look & Feel
      Appearance
      Screensaver
      Windows
      Main menu
      Assistive Technology
      Keyboard shortcuts

Software:
      Software sources
      Update manager
      Package manager (g-a-i)
      Advanced package manager (synaptic)
      Preferred applications
      Software languages (language support)
      Computer Janitor

Hardware:
      Hardware drivers
      Display
      Keyboard
      Mouse
      Sound
      Printing
      Default Printer
      Bluetooth
      System testing

Networking:
      Network connections
      Network tools
      Network proxy
      Remote desktop
      Firewall

Storage:
      Backup
      Partitioning tools
      Search and indexing
      Compression
      Disk usage
      Synchronization

Users & Groups:
      Login Window
      Users and Groups
      Authorizations
      About me
      Encryption and Keyrings
      Passwords and Encryption Keys

System:
      Log file viewer
      System monitor
      Services
      Power management
      Terminal
      USB Startup Disk Creator
      Time and Date

Help
      Help and Support
      About Ubuntu
      About Gnome

Tags: ayatana
Revision history for this message
Anmar Oueja (anmar) wrote :

I strongly recommend that you add replace the menu structure, which is lengthy and not very good for laptops and netbooks (screen size), with the Control Center application. This way I can search for what I want and find it quickly and the display is nice and clean.

To make things more legible, please Put the description under the icon and not to the right of it. Use multi lines so things are tight but not too tight.

Also, please get rid of the magnifying glass in the search field. it is misleading. People think you need to click on it.
Instead of the magnifying glass, please replace with a broom or X to cancel the search in a single click. I think this should be the standard behaviour across all search entries.

Revision history for this message
Mel C (melc) wrote :

i hope this is not papercut....

Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.
While this is truly a welcome change, it is not a Papercut. This is not a simple / easy fix.Major reworking of the menu needs to be done.
For further info about papercuts criteria , pls read > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut

This issue will be dealt as a part of the Ayatana project.

Changed in hundredpapercuts:
status: New → Invalid
Changed in ayatana:
status: New → Invalid
tags: added: ayatana
Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

Won't Fix in papercuts , but is tagged "ayatana" to be overseen in The Ayatana project.

Changed in hundredpapercuts:
status: Invalid → Won't Fix
arky (arky)
affects: ubuntu → gnome-menus (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Thank you for your bug report and interest there, the bug is probably not going to see lot of action there you should rather use mailing lists to discuss such changes

Changed in gnome-menus (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
papukaija (papukaija)
Changed in gnome-menus (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
papukaija (papukaija) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 174277, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.