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Ubuntu 12.04 To Include Head-Up Display Menus
For the first few years of its existence, it would have been fair to say that Canonical was essentially polishing, packaging and publishing Debian Linux (and Gnome) to create the base Ubuntu desktop, to great acclaim. For the past few years, though, the company has pushed new looks and new applications (cf. Unity and Ubuntu TV), and refused to stick with prettifying existing interfaces. Now, Barence writes with this excerpt from PC Pro: "Ubuntu is set to replace the 30-year-old computer menu system with a 'Head-Up Display' that allows users to simply type or speak menu commands. Instead of hunting through drop-down menus to find application commands, Ubuntu's Head-Up Display lets users type what they want to do into a search box. The system suggests possible commands as the user begins typing – entering 'Rad' would bring up the Radial blur command in the GIMP art package, for example. HUD also uses fuzzy matching and learns from past searches to ensure the correct commands are offered to users. Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth told PC Pro the HUD will make it easier for people to learn new software packages, and migrate from Windows to Linux software without having to relearn menus. The HUD will first appear in Ubuntu 12.04."
has had this for decades. M-x allows you to enter a command by name, with tab completion.
There are a lot of comments saying that this is copying the Run command in Windows or Quicksilver for the Mac. It's not. These don't get you to commands within applications, As Shuttleworth says: “It’s all hooked in below the application level.”
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OS X Lion has a similar feature, you can search the menu of any application by typing the command in a menu search box. The menu still stays on the screen though. It is actually quite useful, because if a menu item is in a obnoxious place, it becomes more easy to find.
You didn't read the article, did you?
Watch the video and then let me know how you've been doing this for years on Windows and Linux because I'm really curious now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=w_WW-DHqR3c
ayottesoftware.com
I've been doing something similar on OS X.
Every application's Help menu item has a textbox that filters all menu items. You can also reach this textbox through a shortcut (cmd+shift+?).
So, for example, if I'm editing a document and I want to make some text superscript, Instead of hunting through its menus, I just hit cmd+shift+?, type 'sup' and hit enter.
It may be 7 digits, but at least it's a semiprime
Sounds more like they are taking an existing tech, that was never really promoted, and promoting it, rather than actually producing something new.
If you watch the video, you'll see that they've expanded on the idea. It's not just an app/document finder, it's a functionality finder.
For example, I'm using Firefox right now. Let's say I can't remember how to add a bookmark. I would pop up the HUD box and start typing "bookmark", and just a few letters in I would see something like "Bookmark > Bookmark this page", which I would select.
I can't speak for OSX, but the Windows launcher functionality, while really helpful, does not do that.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
If you could chill the Ubuntu hate for a second, you could see that this not replace the visible menu tree, but adds an additional option.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Ubuntu does not support users. Ubuntu users will be abused by Unity. I don't need to know it. The world does not revolve around GNOME3's arrogant prick developers nor Canonical's brain-farting code monkeys.