3 ms·

When I still used windows (a very long time ago, before 2002), I spent some time organizing programs in folders and subfolders within the start menu. I had "gam

by wazoox 16y ago

When I still used windows (a very long time ago, before 2002), I spent some time organizing programs in folders and subfolders within the start menu. I had "games", "graphics", "dev", etc, with applications subfolders. It's actually very simple to do (well it was back in win98 at least): right click anywhere in the start menu and "browse here".

adamesque 16y ago
You definitely want customization to be simple. But even still, you should be careful about the mental model you're imposing on your users, especially if they're forced to literally dismantle that model to rearrange things the way they'd like. Cognitively, it's almost more than twice as much work, once you factor in the uncertainty of messing with things you're not sure you can/should mess with. (Were they pre-arranged a certain way for a reason? Will things break if I move them?) Which means that people are even more likely to leave your default categorization in place, so it had better be bulletproof.
jessriedel 16y ago
I tried to do this, but there were a few major hurdles. First, MS Windows left a million poorly categorized things cluttering up my program categorization. Second, when new programs were installed, I had to manually move them from where they put themselves in the start menu. Occasionally, this broke them. And if I didn't think to do it, my list of programs quickly became ugly and unorganized. Third, multiple locations for the start menu folder items (all users vs. the local user) made this really annoying.
armandososa 16y ago
It was actually simpler than that. Menu items were draggable.
jawee 16y ago
Now there is the extra hurdle of having some software installed system wide and some software installed only for the user.. at least in Windows XP when I last tried to do this, I found that even on a single user system that start menu items were in multiple locations.

by wazoox 16y ago

adamesque 16y ago

You definitely want customization to be simple. But even still, you should be careful about the mental model you're imposing on your users, especially if they're forced to literally dismantle that model to rearrange things the way they'd like. Cognitively, it's almost more than twice as much work, once you factor in the uncertainty of messing with things you're not sure you can/should mess with. (Were they pre-arranged a certain way for a reason? Will things break if I move them?) Which means that people are even more likely to leave your default categorization in place, so it had better be bulletproof.

jessriedel 16y ago

I tried to do this, but there were a few major hurdles. First, MS Windows left a million poorly categorized things cluttering up my program categorization. Second, when new programs were installed, I had to manually move them from where they put themselves in the start menu. Occasionally, this broke them. And if I didn't think to do it, my list of programs quickly became ugly and unorganized. Third, multiple locations for the start menu folder items (all users vs. the local user) made this really annoying.

armandososa 16y ago

It was actually simpler than that. Menu items were draggable.

jawee 16y ago

Now there is the extra hurdle of having some software installed system wide and some software installed only for the user.. at least in Windows XP when I last tried to do this, I found that even on a single user system that start menu items were in multiple locations.