Basic Raptor Menu Structure

Raptor aims to be the new answer for the old desktop question: how to launch the applications quickly? And it tries to tackle this in a coherent way.

Until now, the world has found 2 main ways of answering it. Before we start, we want to have a quick look at those:

Traditional answer, the menu...

There is a structured menu in which you kind find all the applications available in your desktop.

Its main advantages:

All applications are available and mostly easy to get

It's a good way to present the application to someone that doesn't know which application does what.

Main disadvantages:

It looks cluttered.

The application icons are very small and hard to recognize

It takes some time to find your application.

It does not offer a very good categorization of the most used apps.

The console way...

There is some sort of text based UI that shows you several apps based on your text entry

Its main advantages:

Very fast.

Main disadvantages:

You have to know what you are looking for.

Our answer?

Raptor! We try to combine the strengths of each of the previous approaches and to improve the way the launcher interacts with the users...

It does that by combining the features of the two traditional approaches plus introducing many new features into the “menu way” of working. These features are:

A Usage database.

One panel only.

A new structure based on user actions (TOM, task oriented menu)

An automatic search and find tool.

Easily accessible favorites

A better usage of the application description.

Configurability to make it suit your needs.