Re: [Ayatana] Windicators

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 7:24 PM, appi2012@xxxxxxxxx <appi2012@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> …
> Now that I think about it, I see little need for windicators - they offer
> little benefits, and pose many design problems. :/

On the topic of possible design problems, I would like to relate
another discussion here: that of window menus vs. application menus,
and whether window menus should be attached to their respective
windows or always present at the top of the screen. The former school
of thought suggests that a window menu should be beside (maybe merged
with) the titlebar in an unmaximized window, and beside (maybe merged
with) the top panel for a maximized window.

So, that actually sounds a little like the Windicator idea. I guess we
could think of window menus as the penultimate Windicators, since they
are tied directly to windows and there are lots of them. However,
Unity is currently going towards the latter school of thought; the
global menu. Thinking about these two at the same time is making my
head hurt. The distinction between system-level, application-level and
document-level interface could be gloriously organic. If the
distinction isn't organic — if something feels like it is at system
level when it is actually at the document level, for example —
confusion and frustration will be nearby.

I'm not saying any particular idea here is a bad one, but I think this
might need some unification.


Dylan