I found a video of the new start menu for KDE on the Web the other day. It’s actually pretty cool; it looks far more polished than previous versions I’ve seen, it’s resizable, and includes some nice integrated search functionality.

One complaint I have with it, though, is that the search field resides at the very top of the menu. In the video, the user invokes the menu by moving their mouse to the bottom-left corner of the screen and pressing the big friggin’ lizard. To set focus into the search field, they must then move the mouse to the top of the menu and click in it.

In contrast, with OS X Tiger, you would move your mouse to the top-right corner of the screen, click, and type away. Alternatively, you can press Command-Spacebar and start.

With Windows Vista, you would move your mouse to the bottom-left corner of the screen, click, and type away. Alternatively, you can press the Windows button and start.

From my understanding, they’ll be doing usability tests of this feature. I hope they catch this and change the search field’s position.