Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

[Marc Lajoie <manorapide@xxxxxxxxx>]

I, for one, love the integration of the menu and titlebars into the panel in Natty. The decluttering of the workspace, or the "chromifization" (as in Google Chrome, which started the wonderful trend of minimal interfaces and the hiding of visual clutter) of Ubuntu is the main reason I am looking forward to Natty.

So while I understand the concerns about the hidden menu, I agree with the logic of not treating the menu as an indicator, and hiding it up in the panel. Yes, there are a couple of small problems with this approach (mostly discoverability for new users, people using Natty for the very first time), but my opinion is the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

My vote, for what it's worth, is to keep it the way it is!

That said, I would not oppose having the menu in the panel being shown by default, instead of the title, in the case of non-maximized windows, with the title/menu overlap occurring only for maximized windows.

Marc Lajoie

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 8:59 AM, appi2012@xxxxxxxxx <appi2012@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I see four major problems with hiding the menus and covering them with
an application or window title.

1.  Most importantly, it makes the menus much harder to use.

2.  It makes some functions effectively invisible.

The above two problems are important to fix.
 

3.  The application or window title becomes ugly when the menus appear.

#3 is not that big of a problem - we should avoid it when we can, but if its necessary, its better to have an eyesore than a interaction problem.

4.  The application or window title and the title bar are redundant, and
   sometimes inconsistent too.

Although this is a problem, a title is necessary for maximized windows, so it has to be shown for them.

I proposed a solution to this earlier on this list, but unfortunately, it got no replies. However, I still believe that it can solve the problems brought up here.

My basic idea is: https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg04555.html

However, I have a change: The Application Title should only be shown for maximized windows, where it is necessary. Otherwise, only the menu should be visible.

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