daedaluz wrote:

colomar wrote:Hm... On the one hand I like the placement, on the other hand it only has space for two buttons. What if people want more session buttons quickly accessible?
Btw: People who don't loke the session commands in the sidebar and are fine with the "Power/Session" menu can simply remove the buttons from the sidebar. Problem solved, right?

There are total of seven session commands available: shutdown, restart, logout, switch user, lock, sleep & hibernate. That obligates existence of some kind of menu where less used session commands are located, since having them all visible all the time would be rather cluttering (self-explanatory I hope), counterproductive (takes lot of screen space) and confusing (button icon alone is not self-explanatory especially for visually impaired).

I actually thought of separation of Session and Power dialogues on that mockup: pressing Power button would bring dialogue window with shutdown, restart, sleep and hibernate. Pressing Session button would bring similar window with logout, switch user and lock. Those would be similar to confirm windows user now gets when pressing any of those buttons, complete with that nice fadeout effect. Not long after posting that mockup I realized it defeats purpose of having Power/Session menu!

So actually, going with those two "superbuttons" is exclusive to having Power/Session menu. It is either-or situation. Both would require same amount of clicks and same mouse movement thanks to confirm dialogs, as selection dialog would also acts as confirmation dialog. Three clicks to shutdown in either case (assuming menu is set to auto-open on hover). Actually, I now started leaning towards "superbuttons". Humans can effectively perceive & keep 2-5 things in mind simultaneously, so instead of looking at menu of 7 items user would get first 2 and then 3-4 options to choose from, so it would make human-computer interaction faster.

So it would look something like...

You are correct that users can put what they want to favorites, and I have nothing against someone wanting shutdown right next to Firefox icon. I've debated sanity of that as default setting. Rather than thinking "users can remove those", think "users can add those". User most likely to shutdown computer by accident is the user least likely to fealize he can remove the offender.

colomar wrote:You are right that this would have neither considerable advantages nor disadvantages over just having the "Power / Session" menu. Working memory capacity is not relevant here because all seven options are visible. This is an aspect where I psychological knowledge regularly misinterpreted in practice: The working memory capacity is relevant for keeping several items in memory after they have been hidden. It does not affect performance when all items are visible at the same time. Of course searching for an item among 20 takes longer than among three, but this has little (but not nothing) to do with working memory capacity.
At least this is what I've taken from my psychology studies. If newer research shows a significant drop in search performance when more than 2-5 items are visible at the same time, please provide a reference so I can update my knowledge.

Given that, I prefer the visual consistency of just having the menu look like all other menus instead of the separate buttons with icons.

Which - if any - items should be placed in the sidebar by default can be discussed, yes. I don't think it makes sense to place session/power buttons "right next to" favorite applications, though. The separator does make sense.

daedaluz wrote:

colomar wrote:
Which - if any - items should be placed in the sidebar by default can be discussed, yes. I don't think it makes sense to place session/power buttons "right next to" favorite applications, though. The separator does make sense.

Thanks for clearing that up about working memory. I think "seek time" would be the term I'm after. I recall number of objects human can effectively track is the same as working memory. Might be wrong. Then there is ofcourse the spatial memory when location of things becomes familiar allowing blind typing and effective computer navigation in general. There is a reason for categories nevertheless instead of having every single thing visible at once.

daedaluz wrote:

enoop wrote:Is there really a problem with people accidentally turning off their computer? Doesn't clicking the power off button prompt the shutdown dialog in the middle of the screen that has text saying shut down? Seems like people would learn through trial and error the separation. Also these options are handled in homerun kicker just like favorites (you can add more or remove them, they are your favorite, most used power options). I think making the separator more defined would be a good fix, or removing the three buttons and replacing it simply with the leave button to make it more distinct.

daedaluz wrote:I don't know, nobody does usability testing so all is speculation. Would people learn? Definitely. But why put them through such confusion in the first place? I'm glad you agree that those session tools need to be more clearly defined as not favorite applications, so why not go all the way and give them their own distinct area? What benefit having those in same area as favorites has?