I suspect those of us who use and swear by Gnome-Do/Synapse/Quicksilver and the like will love this. For those who don't, think of this is as 'Google Instant' applied to the desktop interface. It feels like a whole layer has been removed from between you and what you want to do.
It's so much more efficient and flow-of-thought oriented, and opens up new opportunities for innovation on the desktop (better fuzzy search algorithms, speech control, etc). Glad to see Canonical pushing the tech here.
I use Gnome-Do, Launchy, and Quicksilver on all of my machines, and I think this is a pretty horrible idea. The lack of similarity between program names is why the aforementioned programs are useful; the similarity between menu names are why this is questionable at best. I don't think "Close Project" and start typing it, I think "File menu" and scan for it, until I know the keyboard shortcut for it. Typing as much of "Close Project" is necessary to make it realize that that's what I mean, then arrowing (or whatever) to it, is slower than mousing to it. Once I know the keyboard shortcut for it, this "HUD" silliness is useless.
And if HUD ever gives me "Close Project" when I meant "Close Window", I'm going to throw it out the goddam window.
I like that they're trying new things, but "people like Quicksilver, so people will like something entirely unlike Quicksilver" is terrifyingly bad reasoning.
>Once I know the keyboard shortcut for it, this "HUD" silliness is useless.
Use the keyboard shortcuts when they're available or you know them, and HUD when they'er not?
>"people like Quicksilver, so people will like something entirely unlike Quicksilver" is terrifyingly bad reasoning.
If you think HUD is 'entirely unlike' Quicksilver, then you probably need to broaden your world somewhat. They're both just tools, and much more similar than not.
On this topic at least, my world is sufficiently broad, thank-you-very-much. I appreciate the condescension, though.
The search set of applications, which are generally fairly distinctly named (especially since the Linux world finally got away from G-everything and K-everything), and menu options, which generally are not because they operate on a small set of concepts, is so vastly different in requirements and behavior that it's like trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. So, yeah, it is (almost) entirely dissimilar.
Well, that's where 1) fuzzy search and 2) intelligent, usage-based sorting kick in. Not sure about other mentioned launchers, but Kupfer (which I use) indexes not only applications, but a myriad of other indexable items, such as files, media player items, window actions and so on, so we are talking about hundreds of items, some of which certainly similarly named. It would be completely unusable without great sorting and searching algorithm.
It's so much more efficient and flow-of-thought oriented, and opens up new opportunities for innovation on the desktop (better fuzzy search algorithms, speech control, etc). Glad to see Canonical pushing the tech here.