January 15th Release: Launchpad Menu Visual Update and Increased Language Support
Developing our widget distribution platform Launchpad really has been a conversation between us and you. You all tell us what your priorities are and then we try and work those into the product roadmap.
One thing that you’ve told us over and over again is that you want Launchpad to be as customizable as possible. Well, we’ve just done a visual update for the Launchpad menu to help with this.
In its previous state, we had a high level of customizability but after a point it started to degrade the user experience. So… we maintained the same level of flexibility but decided to simplify things slightly. The destinations are now displayed in more of a list. We’ve changed the font. Now everything’s done in panes that overlay each other.
We’ve also moved away from the tabs. For example, the tabs for “Popular” and “All” destinations have been removed. The choice of all destinations is now just another option in in the destination list. (See the screenshot above)
In this release, you may also notice that we updated and sped up the Address Book integration. It should pull down e-mail addresses faster. We’ve also added support for more languages.
Let us know what you think about this release. Drop me a comment on this post or drop me an e-mail: justin@clearspring.com
Thanks!
January 15th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Hmm, not sure you should have removed the larger icon size option. It’s always better to let the users decide rather than making the choice for them. Just out of curiosity? Was this a data driven decision? What were the percentages of those using the large icons vs. rectangular button configuration? Or were there some vocal few perhaps with more persuasive relationships that pushed the menu in this direction? Just questions from a patron, nothing more.