Linux Mint Forums

I spent a few weeks using Windows 8 to fully understand it, and I got to say, the fullscreen menu is the best thing I ever used, I'm talking about productivity only. Tiles are stupid and the overall experience is bad but we don't need to start this discussion.

You can always learn from your competition, so here's my suggestion for the Cinnamon menu:

- Let the user decide how many rows/colums the "pinned" icons have and also the icon size (without scaling down when you add more, if the menu can't adapt the height them just don't allow more items than possible, or auto append to another column)

Did a quick example:


This have zero impact on the "casual classic desktop experience" since it doesn't change anything unless the user want and make the changes. The full experience would be an option to make the menu fullscreen, I can't even imagine how beautiful it would be combined with the upcoming features like bump maps. You could also integrate file search on the fullscreen menu like Windows 8, but let's not get greedy.

--------------------------

Not that you guys need any advice from me but I just want to say: don't make the mistake of revamping things too radically or breaking the whole paradigm. If you ever had an idea that "could change the way the world will experience the desktop" (I only hear that once a month), make an opt-in feature, just don't shove it on the user.

Do you mean something like what Gnome 3 has? I am a big fan of it.

Yes and no

Searching for applications is the same, I really hate the "Categories" or "Lens" idea. I just want to pin things and be able to click always on the same spot to open a program. Super + click on a fixed position is the fastest way (besides icons pinned on the bar or something similar) to launch an application, in my opinion. I really hate to type, have to select a category or even worse: click on an ordered list that changes position of items depending on what you install.

Windows 8 fullscreen menu is the perfect flow for everything:
- Super + click on a fixed position icon (that you placed as you want) to open prefered applications
- Super + type keyword and select between filters [ applications, files, store or even direct "run" if you press enter ]. You can say this is similar to "lens" or categories but it doesn't get on your way of having to use multiple shortcuts or the mess of mixing files, online items and everything else together.

it doesn't get better than that, maybe adding more filter options or something

braindamage wrote:- Let the user decide how many rows/colums the "pinned" icons have and also the icon size (without scaling down when you add more, if the menu can't adapt the height them just don't allow more items than possible, or auto append to another column)

braindamage wrote:- Super + click on a fixed position icon (that you placed as you want) to open prefered applications

This reminds me of the classic (Gnome2/MATE) mintMenu, except for one thing - its Favorites items have both icons and text, not icons only.
Have you seen the Classic Menu applet? It's a reimplementation of the classic mintMenu for Cinnamon.