Right now PreferredApplications is just one setting. But it could potentially be a mechanism to structure a menu. WindowsXp also has a mechanism to present often used applications better visible. We should mix this idea with a solutions to the name/function problem that everybody knows: Some applications like to be in the menu by their names and others bei their functions. The problem that occurs is clear: If you have to word processors like OpenOfficeWriter and AbiWord than both have the same entry name and you would have to know which one to open by the symbol.
- Goal: end the confusion of icons, dialogues and settings.
Suggestions
- Merge the preferred application settings with the menu editor, because both handle the selection of what application to open.
- Present a better visible list of the preferred applications. This could be a mix of applications that are used often and of those a user has selcted to be prefered. So this also would come from right click "Open with".
- The user should always get the same simple dialogue to configure the applications. It is very confusing that one can: 1.) Edit the menu entries, 2.) Choose a preferred application 3.) Choose what applications I prefer to handle files . (All settings have different look but only a marginal different sense)
One better view could be a menu entry under "Applications"->"Preferred Applications" with the last entry being "Configure Preferred Applications" (similar to "Open with..."-dialogue)
The default view could be to present the ONE preferred application for a job, so we default to Epiphany, AbiWord and Gnumeric BUT we name it as Browser, Word Processor and Spreadsheet.
- The user could be able to configure how this list is generated in an "advanced" mode. So he could choose that this list dynamically by the last apps he uses or only a fixed and ordered list, etc.
- I then suggest that in all structured menus the applications only get listed by their names and NEVER by function.
Please edit this page courageously - I do not take this personally. -- ThiloPfennig 2006-09-21 22:16:39