Usability: GNOME Classic: Applications menu needs a default setting to not enter application category on hover
It is my understanding that GNOME Classic is there to better server less technical users with a more stripped-down, bare bones, and traditional desktop paradigm. While it mostly achieves this, today I witnessed a massive usability problem with the "Applications" menu.
The "Applications" menu has an odd behaviour where it automatically enters the highlighted category. For very competent mouse users, this may be easy. However, for computer illiterate, elderly, or disabled users, this is a usability nightmare. In practice, I witnessed my grandmother struggling to achieve a basic selection action, because she was overwhelmed by the jarring UI behaviour that happened as a result of her imprecise mouse abilities. After replacing the menu with a 3rd party menu that required a click on the category, she was very pleased with her new laptop, and found it very easy to learn and understand compared to base GNOME, or a Windows-like GNOME configuration.
What needs to change is that the user should need to click an app category for the category to be switched, and the active category needs to be highlighted to communicate to the user where they are.
In order for less mouse literate users to benefit from the advantages of the simplicity of GNOME Classic, this behaviour needs to change. I did not screen record the interaction, so here is a video demonstration of the problem:
https://youtu.be/UicfIqvf3eA?t=122
The video is set to start when I begin demonstrating the issue. However, I strongly recommend watching the full thing for context, if you have the time.