Really nice, Really interesting.
and, could you also provide an 'text only' option?
I'm using nere the 3 menus provided (classic, kickoff and lancelot) just to compare each one,
(but still, my favorite way to launch apps is alt+f2)

Thanks Tomaz.
I fail to see the point of a text only option. What would the use case be, how is it beneficial?

It looks cool, in the middle between the unusable Kickoff and the overloaded Lancelot (my own opinion, some people might like Kickoff... and I'm using Lancelot everyday, love it... be even in 1440x900, taking half of the screen, it seems too small to display all the information...). I would probably use it.

Regarding the footer, I prefer the standard one. I would like to keep what's next the menu in the panel accessible. Sometimes I just open the menu while receiving a IM message, which comes next to the menu button. I want to be able to cancel the opening and read that message just by clicking on the taskbar.

the point of text only is to fasten things a little bit. (but only in list mode, of course)

What do you mean by faster? Loading the menu items faster, or faster to find what you want?

loading the menu itens faster,
on Lancelot it usually lags for ~0.5 seg before showing up on my machine, probably because the heavy use of eye candy (but, it`s a great eye candy...)

Well, the icons are not that problematic. So, if Zetta would use standard QWidgets, it would be reasonably fast in the icon mode. The main speed inhibitor of L are SVGs and custom painting (will have to profile it eventually to make it faster).

for big sub categorys you could "steal" thew kbx idea to have expandelbale sub categorys.

and implemnt the litle icon from one klick selction in konq the litle + that shows upp in the korner of the icon.

that one could take to another level for diffrent choises, lik one read one that would close the sub category and that one whould show upp att any icon in a subcategory and klicking i would close the subcategory it belongs to.

and wherever you nead to controll option but a button would be hard 2 implemnt..


and if you would let it be "theamble" like kbfx i would like it even more:P^^ as i like to use dekorator thems and would like my startmenus to fit in the style:P

Yeah, I don't think loading the items should be an issue. If that is the only reason for a "text only" mode, I think it would be better to work on the speed issue.

I just looked at a kbfx screenshot and it looks scarily like Zetta. I think being able to expand/contract the subcategories could make sense. I've thought about another approach, will see if I have time to make a mockup.

Of course the start menu should be themeable - it should follow your Plasma theme.

I think, that u can assembly scan mode and skim mode into one program view, but remove category view in some situation. The idea is to show Scan mode above category bar if you move mouse above some category in right(program) view. In the center of menu(between category-scan and programs view) you can place button to swap category/scan mode view. You can also place this button on the inside category-scan view, so user don't must click on this button. And one most think. The default program view should be all programs, nor favorites apps view, but you can view all favorites app at bottom of programs view.

Other idea is to show scan mode of the right of menu(the outside of app view) and digest all position in scan and skim view. Imagine we have seven position displayed in scan menu and 14 in skim menu. We display in scan menu only seven elements and scroll bars. If user have search item with have number 13, then he looks first in scan menu and next to skim menu(so they only looks for seven item in skim menu). She can also go to scan menu, scroll it and run app he needs in skim menu.

We can also connect the two concept and for ex. show scan menu with digest above category menu.

Is everybody really amped for Raptor? I don't understand what all the fuss is about.

And Zetta does look kind of cool. I myself am using Lancelot right now. I really like it, but there are improvements that could be made. My real question with all these new start menus is that which one will be the official. I know that when I upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10(fresh install) I had to reinstall the Lancelot package. I don't know how I feel about the hovering over task bar, but if it is easy to exit just by clicking the icon it could be alright.

As long as you make it keyboard accessible, I'd use it

Of the three things you mention in your target, if I want to know if I have an application installed, I open Konsole and use locate - as applications like ps2pdf don't appear in KDE anyway and locate will find KDE applications as well.

If I want to log out I right click (on a previous setup I added the icons to the panel but I don't do that any longer).

So the only thing I use the KDE menu for is a rarely used application and I use so few of those they are usually in History.

I wonder whether the first question is: what is the KDE menu for as you can do most things without it?

Just my twopennorth' to stir things up.

Uh huh, I had almost forgotten this thread.

@ john_hudson:
What if you don't know the name of the application? Sometimes I like to browse through the menu just to check which applications I've installed. If I'm bored I take a look at the games category - since I use they very seldom, I remember most games by icon rather than name. That's what I mean with "browse applications".

And this is also why Kickoff doesn't do it for me - I want a quick overview without too many mouse clicks.

Should this be moved to the brainstorm forum?