put Haiku's name into Haiku's DeskBar (Like BeOS R5)

[nutela]

I consider this to be a bug of some kind; I can't see what the blue leaf stands for, (I thought it was supposed to be a feather), when I look at the BeOS hrev5 desktop I see immediately that it is BeOS because it is written (on the logo) in the DeskBar.

This might seem silly, but this is purely marketing, I know the Haiku-logo is in the Desktop background picture, but a lot of users change their Desktop background picture and probably show their Desktop screen to other users but most importantly will upload screenshots.

2nd: it must be obvious the Leaf-menu-logo is clickable and will open the application menu. For example; the Windows XP's Start-menu has written "Start" on it's button, it lights up when mouse-over, and it is more or less button-ish.

3nd: it is called leaf-menu, but as I said, I couldn't tell it was a leaf but thought it was a feather, thus it did not occur immediately to me that it was referencing the Deskbar Menu or better former "Be menu", which btw is also not very clear.

Thank you for your attention.

[mmlr]

Well this has been discussed previously I think. IMO it's not really necessary. The references you put here are not really good ones BTW. Windows does not have the OS name in the start menu button and in Vista it doesn't even say "Start" anymore. Also when using a windows < XP or with the classic theme the button does not light up or anything. Under linux you usually have the gnome foot, the KDE k thing or something to that extend.

I _might_ agree that it should be made more recognizable as a clickable button, although it is really only the very first time you use the OS where you might not know it is a button. So some kind of quick introduction at first boot explaining it would perfectly suffice IMO.

So the only reason I would see to change the logo is from the marketing perspective. I don't know if this is a strong enough argument for it though. Another thing that might point into the direction of changing the logo is that the current one doesn't really look right when the Deskbar is used in the horizontal layout.

[nutela]

Say, shouldn't haiku be _better_ then MS Windows? I agree with your points mmlr but comparing it with Windows... is not such a good idea since Windows is IMO a very bad OS, especially from a usability perspective.

[mmlr]

That's not what I said. I compared it to windows since you brought it up as a reference. I just pointed out that comparing to other OSes it doesn't seem to be particularly common to put the name there.

I would like to hear from Jorge on that matter from the marketing perspective and maybe from Stephan if he could fit it in nicely. If it's not doable to put the name there so that it looks more attractive than a logo or a part of the logo, then I simply wouldn't do it. If it can be easily integrated so that it looks good then why not give it a try of course.

[axeld]

As I recall, the logo area is too small to have a Haiku writing in there that could look good. Besides that, I like the leaf, and I think it's nice trying to connect this to Haiku when it comes to operating systems. You rarely see screenshots completely out of context, and don't know what system you see running.

[stippi]

When I designed the new Deskbar menu button, I started out with the Haiku name and arrived at the current logo after a lot of tries. The problem with the Deskbar along the top or bottom needs to be fixed of course. I guess if I was using it that way, it would have annoyed my enough to motivate a fix by now. (I guess my fix would simply be to make the button wider.) If no one beats me to it, I will probably fix it eventually.

Personally, I don't feel that the word "Haiku" on screenshots is a strong enough reason if it doesn't actually look better. I think a graphical logo can be a strong or even a stronger association, it doesn't have to be a word. Microsoft is doing this in Vista and Apple does it since ages in Mac OS. Linux desktops are doing it as well. IMHO, the leaf or feather (I don't take sides on that one :-) is just more tasteful. That being said, if someone comes with a better looking logo that integrates the word "Haiku", then we can change it of course. It has to be convincing and pretty obviously better though, IMHO.

[nutela]

Thanks for the feedback.

I think we can agree that having the name in the logo and having a clear-to-see menu entry are 2 different things. I agree that the name in the logo is purely a marketing thing except when used as a reference in a manual like "like click the logo with the word Haiku next to it".

Here are my thoughts about the clear-to-see menu entries.

My problem with lots of menu's like these is that you can't tell which is the 'main' one, take KDE's bar or Gnome's bar, at work we have a few systems, Red Hat and Suse mainly, I frequently search for an application, settings and status -menu only to find it after I have clicked other symbols (I frequently launch a terminal or some other thing by clicking on the wrong widget) and then I think by myself [sarcasm on] "Duh, so this tiny 16x16 little red thing (red hat) is the entry, well terrific!" [sarcasm off] At least Suse used a tiny triangle (arrow) to discern between an regular shortcut icon and a menu. Suse version 10.x has got a nice "start menu" IMHO although the tabs are rather difficult to distinguish from the active one (it is still far better then XP's). It think it helps that the logo has a different size and aspect ratio the all other icons and widgets. MS's OTOH Start-logo maybe sounds dumb, it is pretty obvious. You can't get much more clear then that IMHO.

The same applies for my cellphone's (Sony Ericson K750i) menu entry "Menu"

So to conclude, this menu entry should "stand out", glow or something similar when mouse is over it (if only if it would be the single thing which would do that in the entire OS) too show it is clickable, something more than the gazillion of functionality which is waiting to be discovered by the user.

Of course it would be nice if the menu entry would be pretty as well, a blue leaf is a little bit illogical, I thought Haiku's theme was 3 leafs, red, green and yellow?

[nutela]

I can't seem to edit? I mean to say in the stand-out-part that the DeskBar menu button should be different from all other "gazillion of functionality" like widgets and other graphical gling and bling we can witness on the web and other 'modern' operating systems.

[axeld]

I'm closing this as invalid, have a look at the recent discussion on haiku-development.

[nutela]

A link would have been nice...

[nutela]

I could not find anything in the recent discussion on haiku-development other besides the "Haiku Alpha 1 desktop logo proposal" where there was no discussion about the Desk Bar at all.