4 ms·

> everything is folders and files idea of the start menu Your comment is Ribbon/magic-search-bar vs hierarchical-organization preference in a nutshell. I've d

by ethbr0 3y ago

> everything is folders and files idea of the start menu Your comment is Ribbon/magic-search-bar vs hierarchical-organization preference in a nutshell. I've decided there are two mutually-exclusive sorts of people: (a) those who want search to surface things for them, and hate having to remember where to find things & (b) those who want to remember where/how to find things, and hate relying on fuzzy search to surface them. IMHO, there's enough of each type that any given UI should support both. Ribbon would have gotten less flak if they hadn't also simultaneously made a mess of the organizational hierarchy behind the scenes. (MS Office-style "select things to show from a giant list in a tiny scrollbox" is terrible)

tsss 3y ago
I also prefer the ribbons, but a real power user of hierarchical menus doesn't click through them. The menus in Windows used to have the first character underlined: this is a shortcut. File->Save could be accessed with an incantation like Alt+fs. The real power of the old menus was remembering the discoverable shortcuts and flying through the menus without using mouse, somewhat similar to how Vim works.
JohnFen 3y ago
> those who want to remember where/how to find things, and hate relying on fuzzy search to surface them. I'm in this camp, but with a bit of nuance. Fuzzy search tends not to work well for me -- if I can't remember the exact name of the application I want to use (and I often can't), then search is an iffy way to locate it. But mostly, it's about not liking to switch between using the mouse and using the keyboard. If I'm firing up a program, I'm almost certainly using the mouse at the moment. Switching to keyboard adds a bit of unnecessary disruption. > Ribbon would have gotten less flak if they hadn't also simultaneously made a mess My problem with the ribbon is that the contents move around, which means I'm constantly having to search through it for the thing I want to do.
vxNsr 3y ago
If there was a keyboard shortcut to focus the menu searchbar I wouldn’t mind ribbon at all, typing ctrl+hekwj is just as fast as typing ctrl+/grou+enter
tomxor 3y ago
> I've decided there are two mutually-exclusive sorts of people: (a) those who want search to surface things for them, and hate having to remember where to find things & (b) those who want to remember where/how to find things, and hate relying on fuzzy search to surface them. Funny because I belong in both camps, but for different things. I prefer fuzzy, flat search for launching applications (I mean we basically do the same on the CLI right? Hierarchy for apps seem more like arbitrary labels. Some things don't neatly fit into one label. And prefer to locate files by hierarchy. With the exception of less familiar and very large file systems and codebases, where I will resort to either fuzzy filename find or grep like tools. I use broot for my file manager which caters to all of these modes quite nicely.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  > fuzzy, flat search for launching applications (I mean we basically do the same on the CLI right? The first time we each had to debug a $PATH search order issue makes this a yes&no answer from me. There's still a hierarchy and locations... but most of the time we can just ignore it and get on with things.
  - tomxor 3y ago
    Yes but that's only in terms of resolution, the interface is flat, i.e you don't explicitly ask for usr/sbin over usr/bin. The differences only become a problem with naming conflicts and misconfigured $PATHs.
ilyt 3y ago
For me menus are great for discovering related features on my own, search is great for getting to them quickly. I wouldn't want to have only one or the other.

by ethbr0 3y ago

tsss 3y ago

I also prefer the ribbons, but a real power user of hierarchical menus doesn't click through them. The menus in Windows used to have the first character underlined: this is a shortcut. File->Save could be accessed with an incantation like Alt+fs. The real power of the old menus was remembering the discoverable shortcuts and flying through the menus without using mouse, somewhat similar to how Vim works.

JohnFen 3y ago

> those who want to remember where/how to find things, and hate relying on fuzzy search to surface them. I'm in this camp, but with a bit of nuance. Fuzzy search tends not to work well for me -- if I can't remember the exact name of the application I want to use (and I often can't), then search is an iffy way to locate it. But mostly, it's about not liking to switch between using the mouse and using the keyboard. If I'm firing up a program, I'm almost certainly using the mouse at the moment. Switching to keyboard adds a bit of unnecessary disruption. > Ribbon would have gotten less flak if they hadn't also simultaneously made a mess My problem with the ribbon is that the contents move around, which means I'm constantly having to search through it for the thing I want to do.

vxNsr 3y ago

If there was a keyboard shortcut to focus the menu searchbar I wouldn’t mind ribbon at all, typing ctrl+hekwj is just as fast as typing ctrl+/grou+enter

tomxor 3y ago

> I've decided there are two mutually-exclusive sorts of people: (a) those who want search to surface things for them, and hate having to remember where to find things & (b) those who want to remember where/how to find things, and hate relying on fuzzy search to surface them. Funny because I belong in both camps, but for different things. I prefer fuzzy, flat search for launching applications (I mean we basically do the same on the CLI right? Hierarchy for apps seem more like arbitrary labels. Some things don't neatly fit into one label. And prefer to locate files by hierarchy. With the exception of less familiar and very large file systems and codebases, where I will resort to either fuzzy filename find or grep like tools. I use broot for my file manager which caters to all of these modes quite nicely.

ethbr0 3y ago
> fuzzy, flat search for launching applications (I mean we basically do the same on the CLI right? The first time we each had to debug a $PATH search order issue makes this a yes&no answer from me. There's still a hierarchy and locations... but most of the time we can just ignore it and get on with things.
- tomxor 3y ago
  Yes but that's only in terms of resolution, the interface is flat, i.e you don't explicitly ask for usr/sbin over usr/bin. The differences only become a problem with naming conflicts and misconfigured $PATHs.

ilyt 3y ago

For me menus are great for discovering related features on my own, search is great for getting to them quickly. I wouldn't want to have only one or the other.