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KDE and the Menu Crisis

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KDE

The menu crisis has been slow in coming — so slowly that few people are aware of it. Bit by bit, they have become accustomed to the inconvenience and distraction of the menu on the computer desktop, and learned to endure it. Yet the fact that KDE’s Plasma 5 desktop offers three choices of menu layouts, as well as a couple of alternatives to alleviate the difficulties shows just how little consensus exists about the most usable menu design.

The crisis exists because the menu was designed when thirty megabyte hard drives were the norm, yet we continue to use it. The purpose of a menu is to launch an application, preferably as quickly as possible, so a user’s work flow is uninterrupted. When personal computers were first introduced, menus easily filled this purpose. Few applications were available, and menus rarely had to be more than a couple of levels deep, so applications could easily be found.

However, as hard drives became larger, users had to scan more and more applications to find the one they wanted. The most extreme case was the Debian menu, which in places was six or seven levels deep. All sorts of partial solutions were tried –for example, not listing all the applications, a search field, and favorite list — but the problem has steadily increased with the size of drives. Probably the only reason why all the stopgap designs and solutions for menus are tolerated at all is that their uses on phones and tablets means that they have conditioned all of us to endure the awkwardness as the norm. Most users simply assume that nothing can be done, and continue using menus the same as always — ironically, often at the same time as moving away from desktop launchers, which can have the same problems, but can at least take provide another solution to help keep menus functioning.

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