Too many icons in the Ubuntu menus?‏ (repost)

[Ioannis Nousias]

My personal opinion is that visual aids, such as launcher icons, are a 
necessity. Removing them would be a step in the wrong direction.

I do I agree that icons design must be improved in order for them to 
serve their purpose right from the start (when the user has not yet made 
the association between icon and application).

Since we are on this subject, I find menus a thing of the past. 
Especially menus with deep levels of hierarchy. Also using text to 
identify an application/task/object is unintuitive and 'slow'. In real 
life we see a chair (for instance) and we know it's a chair. We don't 
need a little label there telling us it's a chair ;) It can be more 
tricky of course when dealing with 'actions' or abstract definitions. 
Text is good for 'calling' a task/application, semantic search, like 
desk-bar.

Again, that's my humble opinion. It probably is a left/right brain 
hemisphere thing :)

regards,
Ioannis


Michael T wrote:
> I'm sorry, I am short of sleep at the moment and sent this without a subject.
>
> === Reposted message===================================================
> Hello,
>  
> I originally posted this as a wishlist item on Launchpad, but was advised to send it to the appropriate
> mailing list (so I hope that this is it :) ).  Something which slightly annoys me in Ubuntu (and more
> generally in KDE and Gnome) is the overuse of icons in menus.  Most (if not all) GUI style guidelines
> recommend only using icons in menus where they are instantly recognisable to the user, so that they can
> identify the menu entry from the icon faster than they would be able to read the menu text.  See for
> instance
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGMenus/chapter_17_section_3.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000356-TPXREF116.  
> In other situations, the icon slows the user down, as they will automatically look at the icon before they
> read the text.  If you look at for example the "K" menu in Kubuntu, you will see that every menu entry,
> including every application listed, has an icon next to it, which to my mind makes it look somewhat
> unprofessional.
> Does anyone else have thoughts on this?  I realise of course that in many cases this is something that can
> only be fixed upstream, but I wanted to start a discussion somewhere :)
>  
> Regards,
>  
> Michael
>  
> BTW, please excuse the messy hotmail formatting - this is my "disposable" address for posting to mailing
> lists and things where it will be publically visible.
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