Solutions to Window Start Menu Clutter (aka ideas for programmers)

I do not understand why no one has tried to combat the problem of Start Menu Clutter. Everyone I know seems to have a bulging Start Menu that, even when ordered, makes finding applications very hard.

Problem

It is said that a computer user can not deal with more than 7 options. Any more means that the user can not decide or has trouble finding things.

At the moment there are 73 items in my Windows Start Menu using 2 columns. From what I understand, this is a relatively Menu with other peoples reaching over 250 items and 4 columns. When is there too much?

Not only is there too many items in the Start Menu, but other items are also in folder by company name. When you are looking for a product, you think the product name more often than the company that creates it. If I am looking for the Firefox shortcut, why should I need to know to look for Mozilla? I do not care who makes it, I just want Firefox to run.

Current Solutions

There are some current solutions that offer access to your Start Menu items by typing them into a box. Although this may help a bit, it does not show me all the installed web browsers for example.

Solution

Other than moving to Linux, I think that more third party developments could be made to fix this Microsoft Usability Oversite. A few simple solutions I came up with are:

• Sorting the Start Menu by name.
• Re-organizing the Start Menu so that items are in folders named after products not companies.
• Naming folders named after activities (like image editing) and then products.

The problem with these simple solutions is that they are time consuming and require constant attention. What I would like is a more automated system. Here are three ideas for menus that could be pro grammatically included in the Start Menu:

"Other programs you often run at this time of day" menu (or the OPyORatTOD menu)

It is 9pm on a Saturday and at this time, more often than not, I play games. So have a menu that tracks when applications are run and display the right applications at the right time.

"Applications associated with current running programs" menu (or the AAwCRP menu)

I have the Internet connected, I am streaming online radio over the net, I have Firefox open. Everyone should know that when I have all these applications open, that I am not doing work and an email client should be at the top of the menu

"Socal Tagged Menu Items" menu (or the STMi menu)

Tagging is all the rage now days is it not? So lets tag the Start Menu. Have an program that creates a menu as part of an online effort to put programs in the best places. The website would tell the application that GIMP belongs in a "image editing" folder while "Firefox" is in the Web Browser folder. Internet Explorer could even be put in the correct place (the Recycle Bin). Any new items could have locations voted on and the user could select different organizing schemes (Company, Tag or Product name) for their menu.

Programmed your OPyORatTOD, AAwCRP and STMi menus yet?

Tags: Ideas, Miscellaneous, Opinions, Software

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