linuxcandyclone

                                                                     
                                                                     
                                                                     
                                             
Unity is a great piece of desktop shell that will become even greater with Oneiric soon. 

But that's not my topic for toToday, my topic is a complaint about Unity, something that 

I hope will get better in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin.

But let me start with the very roots of this problem:

 Unity divides your programs into three different groups: Your favourite ones, 

those of which you know the name but which you don't need that often though and last

 (and also pretty much least)

 those of which you don't even know the name because 

you only need them in exceptional cases.

What about the accessibility of each of those groups?
Reaching the first group is some kind of a pretty easy task: 

You have its programs in the launcher at the left hand side of your screen. 

No problem at all.
Reaching the second group is no problem neither - if you are a keyboard lover:

 Hit the Windows key, ahem, of course, I'm talking about the Super key and

 then type in the first letters of your desired program until it appears in the results.

 Those who don't want to use a keyboard for opening programs,

 have to follow the same process as for group No. 3.
Reaching the third group means research: Open the dash,

 choose the applications lense (scope, or however they are called in Oneiric now…), 

choose the filtering option, decide which category is most likely to 

contain your program and browse this category hoping to find what you searched for. 

Not so easy, is it?

Unity is designed for - let's face it - 

computer beginners (what does not mean it would not be great for others!). 

Several problems appear when thinking about the text written above:
First: Have you ever watched one of those

 "most stupid assumable users" (as we call them in our country)

 using a keyboard and wondered afterwards not having strangled him? 

Quite likely that you answer this question with a "yes". 

It goes like "search for letter" → "hit" → "search for letter" → … and so on.

 Quite a frustrating thing. As a result,

 such a MSAU can't use the program search function really effortlessly. 

So he has the choice between a keyboard or a category research. 

The choice between hell and blood eagle -

 if you want to hear an extremely exaggerated comparison.
Second: For an occasional computer user the third group is quite a big one,

 so he'll often have to proceed as complicatedly as shown above.
And third: Try to explain this process to such a user. I promise: 

You will give up explaining before he will even have the possibility of

 giving up to try understanding what you are talking about. 

What do I want to tell with all that? Answer: 

We need a better accessibility of category research.

 Definitely.

Now, let's see what salutes us after opening the dash. 

Something like on the picture below/above/aside 

(similar in Oneiric, this is a Natty screenshot). 

After having been using Unity for half a year now I can look back saying that 

I have actually never used any of these links. The preferred applications

 in the second row should most likely already be in the launcher 

(at least on my system they are, just look at the 

launcher at the left margin of the screenshot).

 The links to the applications and the documents lense 

(the two links at the right hand side of the first row) 

can be found elsewhere, too. 

So, they're not necessary neither. The only links I possibly use sometimes 

are the links to the multimedia and Internet application categories.

So, why don't we leave out those links nobody needs at all from the "dash start page" 

and expand those we need sometimes? You could open the dash 

and find links to all categories

 of programs already on the start page? Doesn't this sound like a good solution?

As a result, 

the dash start page will gain a reason of existence and the category 

research will be much more easily accessible.

See, I'm no interface designer,

 just some random guy that has been using Unity for a longer span of time now.

 If you think, I'm telling complete nonsense, feel free to criticize

 my opinion in the comments at all time.