Treat create new interface as an app store and display less options by default

[William]: At the XXX College demo, the one big question at the end of Blaec's demo was "How can we turn most of this off?" We need to find a way to focus cocalc more. One step in this direction is related to our "create a new file" discussion yesterday. In operating systems, there are hundreds (or thousands) of apps installed. In each case, there's a handful of apps you regularly use -- these are exactly the ones on your home screen on your phone, and the apps in the "dock" on the bottom of the screen on your laptop. Is there any way to transport this UX idea to CoCalc? Right now we have four ways to make a new file: flyout panel, +new dropdown, +new full page, and search/create box in explorer (which I forgot about yesterday). In each case, instead of showing dozens of options, we could have:

A small list of "favorites": This could initially default to Jupyter, Terminal and Folder, and that is it -- that is all that maybe 90% of our users ever use.
Immediately below that, there is a button to install more applications. When you click it, our current app catalogue appears. You can then click to "install" any of our current applications to the pinned top section. As a second step, given that the app catalogue isn't always visible, it would be natural to make it much more useful, e.g., have more text next to each app describing it, and include screenshots and doc links.
You can also "uninstall" an app, which just removes it from the top section.

Installing and uninstalling is nothing more than setting a flag in account settings for a user. Also, none of this impacts what frames are available when a file is actually opened or that opening a .py file (say) should just work -- this is 100% about creating new files and that is it.

sagemathinc / cocalc

Treat create new interface as an app store and display less options by default #7255