ReactOS Forum

artguy10 wrote:Alright. Enough about MS vs Apple.

You guys really prefer low-color icons and simple gray square menus to fully-colored icons, intuitive/innovate designs and nicer designs like in Vista?

To me, intuitive/nicer/vista are not words to be mixed in the same sentence. I wish I had my XP back (at least on my Windows partition, linux will always be xubuntu )

FlyingIsFun1217

Artguy: Your idea rocks. If they do not put it in, hack a version of ROS Explorer that has it.

FSX wrote:Artguy: Your idea rocks. If they do not put it in, hack a version of ROS Explorer that has it.

Thanks, FSX. And if you know how, maybe you can work it in as an optional theme (like the way BricoPack works).

Guys, it seems to me that people (both devs and others) call whatever they are used to, the best/most intuitive. But that is like calling the language you speak easier to learn than other languages, when you aren't really in a place to make an objective comparison. But if you can kind of look at all the different types of start menus (on different versions of Windows and different operating systems) objectively and then try to think of what would be most useful and best for a total newbie, that is they way to decide. I personally think that my design is (objectively) more useful than other start menus (though that is difficult for me to say, since I drew it).

And, for what it's worth, here is a little modification of my other start menu:
[ external image ]

Anyhow, you really don't want to make a copy of any Windows start menu, unless you want to give Microsoft a reason to come after you. A different -- though very usable -- start menu is important to distinguish this OS from Windows 95, 2000 or server 2003.

very nice

i'd like to see something like kde opensuse menu - minimalized mouse clicks amount to get into your wanted destenation. it works well on rather big screens.

.aart3k wrote:i'd like to see something like kde opensuse menu - minimalized mouse clicks amount to get into your wanted destenation. it works well on rather big screens.

Kind of like this?
[ external image ]

You don't understand how the menu is coded.

At this stage, it's not about fancy designs, it's about utilizing the available system resources.

The standard windows start menu is pretty much the same as the normal dropdown menus you see at the top of aplications. It uses the same predefined class as those menus, which means it inherites all the functionality of that class, along with it's drawing code.

For us to design a menu which deviates from this, we would need to either skin the existing menu, write a complete new menu class or get themes running to some extent.

Non of these are top priority, hence the menu will be coded to utilize the existing functionality of the standard menu class.

This doesn't mean to say that the entire layout must follow exact layout of the classic startmenu, we can certainly incorportate some changes like the search programs idea, but all these fancy designs are not possible without wasting our already limited developer resource.

Ged: Thats perfect, for a while. Don't make ReactOS fall behind, though, by beta I would think the priority of both graphics and efficient graphics would rise fast. A lot of people will dislike the OS because it looks old, regardless of whether or not thats a correct way to look at it. Plus: there really are speed advantages to using artguy's menu design (the one not made to look like OpenSuSE 10.2s) and i'm sure the fact that it looks good doesn't mean you couldn't implement it without themes. In Vista, the menu looked 2k/98ish when you jacked down to high performance mode, and it was the same thing with un-themed widgets on an un-themed start menu widget.

Mfs design also further proved that un-themed designs are just as useful as themed ones.

Just a note: I think the search box should be focused by default. It comes in handy a lot, since you can type the first letter of a program and often times that program is visible immediately in the list on Open SuSE 10.2.

If you are going to start care about ReactOS design...

Well, I've designed a menu for Gnome, I think it's quite good, so you can use the mockup if you like to
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/ ... tent=65610

It's similar to SLAB menu, but this is not the same.
Any OS now is not using it, and the license is GPL...

React OS is a good idea I would like to help, but don't know any language to programme apps, so I can help with graphic- the view is important too

[ external image ]
Yup, this definately would own vista's start menu.

Ymaster587 wrote:[ external image ]
Yup, this definately would own vista's start menu.

reminds me suse start menu!

Szorstki wrote:If you are going to start care about ReactOS design...

Well, I've designed a menu for Gnome, I think it's quite good, so you can use the mockup if you like to
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/ ... tent=65610

It's similar to SLAB menu, but this is not the same.
Any OS now is not using it, and the license is GPL...

React OS is a good idea I would like to help, but don't know any language to programme apps, so I can help with graphic- the view is important too

Well, I can say that I use it!
If you really are the coder of it, nice job! Very good work.

FlyingIsFun1217

hi all

i was in the vista public beta i hated that os and the newe Sh@t start menu and the new Sh@t explorer looks insulting

You guys really prefer low-color icons and simple gray square menus to fully-colored icons, intuitive/innovate designs and nicer designs like in Vista?

yep keep it simple and fast

more system resources you can give to the programmes you are runing the better

One catch. You're facing major skepticism from several developers on whether that design has any merit.

MadWolf wrote:hi all

i was in the vista public beta i hated that os and the newe Sh@t start menu and the new Sh@t explorer looks insulting

You guys really prefer low-color icons and simple gray square menus to fully-colored icons, intuitive/innovate designs and nicer designs like in Vista?

yep keep it simple and fast

more system resources you can give to the programmes you are runing the better

Hi, I was in the Vista closed testing group and I liked what they came up with before they threw it all out in build 5048, but even though, they're still trying to innovate and I can tell you my mother will find Vista easier than XP. Nonetheless, I think at this moment indeed the 'dull' grey + lowcolour icons are better, as the OS itself has yet to be made stable. Once ROS is fully stable, there'll probably be a group that will try and make some sort of (may it be trimmed down possibly) DWM for ROS, as full compatibility with Vista will require that as well. Before that, no one will really miss it as it isn't going to be used a lot by end-users before it's really usable. And when it's usable, the XP way of theming will probably get us a long way as well.