Hi everyone!

In the trinity-devel mailing list, there is a nst about keeping or removing the Kick-Off launcher.
Here is a part of what is written:

Timothy Pearson wrote:

>> A good solution would be to 1) remove kickoff since it's unlikely that
>> it is used, and doesn't keep in the style of trinity and port the cool
>> features of kickoff into the original kicker panel, if there are any.
> I would need a list of any improvements in Kickoff that are not in Kicker.
>   Copious amounts of whitespace around each widget is not considered an
> improvement. ;-)  Perhaps you could gather information from list members
> on why they use Kickoff vs. Kicker?
>

Francois Andriot wrote:

>Hello, I'm always using Kickoff menu instead of Kicker, so I would'nt 
>like it to be removed.
>I currently have no problem with it.


>Here are some reasons:
>- I prefer having separate tabs for favorites/all 
>applications/Computer/History , instead of having a single huge menu 
>with many submenus.
>- I prefer the search feature of Kickoff, which displays immediatly the 
>icon of the app I'm searching. In kicker, the search feature justs grays 
>out the directories, but I still have to browse the tree to find the 
>application I want. When the application list is very long, it is still 
>not very convenient.
>- I like the way applications are shown in menu: a "big" icon, 
>application name written with big letters, application summary with 
>small letters. So there is no confusion between application name and 
>application summary.

>Maybe we should just ship Kickoff as a separate application, like kbfx  ?

I have the same point of view as Francois Andriot on that and I can even add:

-Kick-Off is as fast as though. If the program I want to launch is Gimp, I click on the start menu, I write ''gim'' on the keyboard and a menu with ''Gimp'' already highlighted appear. I just have to press enter. Otherwise, in the classic menu, I would have to find the ''Graphics'' menu and I would need to read all the names of every programs in the list before I can see ''Gimp'' in the list. And everybody here knows that TDE comes with plenty of programs, so depending of what you are looking for, the menu can be long... We use search engines to find what we want on the Web, but it wouldn't be a good idea on your computer?

-Having a little summary of what the programs are is much more intuitive than having to start it, to see what it is. It is just more simple for users coming from Windows.

-On my little Asus EEE, with a screen resolution of 800x480, the Kick-off is just the right size, where on the classic start menu, often a sub-menu takes all the screen and many columns, and it gets just confusing and harder to find what you are looking for.

-I just don't get the point of users telling everywhere on this mailing list that NOTHING should change in TDE incomparison with KDE 3.5.10 and every single bit should stay identical, but the Kick-Off should be dropped. It is the same thing with Dolphin. Those are 2 KDE3 programs, it is not because they also exists in KDE4 that they are evil.

If the Kick-Off is to be dropped one day or another, would it be at least possible to implement the search feature of the classic start menu in a more efficient way?

Just my opinion...
-Alexandre