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

I've raised this issue before in various places, but I never got any response, so I'm really, positively surprised to see the same issues raised by someone from Canonical.

Why not just keep the window title on the window, it's not really wasting that much screen space. This "space efficiency" as a design goal is being taken to far. Integrating window controls and title into the panel gains a bit of space, but is introduces some issues, most of which you listed.

Keeping the application name in the global menu is important, as it a visual clue as to which application's menus are displayed. The inconsistencies in application naming can be filed as bugs and fixed, as names are read from desktop files. If an application has no menu, no name would need to be displayed.

As for naming of entries in application menus, that sadly can't be easily resolved, as it's mostly up to application developers to sort out.

Cheers,
Mitja

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Paul Thomas" <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Ayatana@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 6:34:52 PM
Subject: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

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After several weeks of trying, last week I finally succeeded in
installing Natty to test Unity.

I was disappointed to see that in Unity, menus are invisible until you
mouse over where they are supposed to be. For a window, until you mouse
over it, the space reserved for its menus is taken up by an application
or window title. And for the desktop, until you mouse over it, the space
for its menus is completely empty. I reported a bug about this, but John
Lea marked it as Invalid on the grounds that "this change request
contradicts the design". He requested that I discuss it here.

The design John cited is not the menu bar specification
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MenuBar>, but a separate "The Unity Menu"
document that is new to me.
<https://docs.google.com/View?id=dfkkjjcj_1776g5ztgbc3>

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.

   The "The Unity Menu" document says that "The top level of the menu
   rarely shows significant information (it is not an indicator) - it
   consists essentially of category headings, like 'File' and 'Edit'
   and 'View'. None of those add any relevant information to the task
   at hand, or wider awareness."

   Whoever wrote that is mistaken. Every time the task at hand involves
   using a menu, it is necessary first to be aware of, and then to move
   the pointer to, the desired menu. That is much harder to do if the
   menu is invisible until just after you finish needing to know where
   it is. Whether the menus collectively are "an indicator" is
   irrelevant: the first item in the rationale, for what determines
   whether something appears in the menu bar, has always been "It's
   not whether it's a status indicator".
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MenuBar?action="">
2. It makes some functions effectively invisible.

   For example, last month Jack Wallen wrote for TechRepublic
   <http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/x/2291>: "One of the
   most handy menu entries in GNOME (for me at least) is the Connect
   to Server entry in the Places menu. This allows the user to connect
   to nearly any type of server quickly and easily. The user can even
   connect to a Windows Share from here. In Unity - you won’t find
   that. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find any means to
   connect to a server in Ubuntu Unity."

   At the time, I didn't understand how he could have had that problem.
   Now I do. The "Connect to Server" item, which is in the "Places"
   menu on the Ubuntu 10.10 desktop, is in the "File" menu on the
   Natty desktop. But the desktop appears, incorrectly, to have no
   menus at all.

   The "The Unity Menu" document says "Many modern applications are
   being designed without substantial menus". The problem with that
   approach was explained in my initial post introducing the menu bar:
   it results in gratuitous inconsistency between applications.
   <http://design.canonical.com/2010/05/menu-bar/#history> But that is
   beside the point. Hiding menus for windows that *do* rely on them
   does nobody any good.

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

   For example, when using Nautilus's menus, the menu bar reads
   File Man File Edit View Go Bookmarks Help.

   Similarly when using Terminal's menus, the menu bar reads
   Termina File Edit View Search Terminal Help.

   And when using Calculator's menus, the menu bar gets a stutter:
   Calculat Calculator Mode Help.

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

   For example, when that Calculator window is open, its title bar says
   "Calculator", and the menu bar pointlessly repeats "Calculator".
   When a Banshee window is open, its title bar says "Banshee Media
   Player", and the menu bar repeats "Banshee Media Player". When a
   PolicyKit authentication alert is open, its title bar says
   "Authenticate", and the menu bar repeats "Authenticate".

   Other windows are inconsistent. For example, Firefox's title bar
   says "Mozilla Firefox", but the menu bar disagrees, saying
   "Firefox Web Browser". Shotwell's title bar says "Shotwell", but
   the menu bar says "Shotwell Photo Manager". Most amusingly, if you
   open a presentation in LibreOffice and then open an accompanying
   spreadsheet, the title bar says "LibreOffice Calc" while the menu
   bar says "LibreOffice Impress".

There are two paragraphs in the "The Unity Menu" document that I agree
with. One says: "The top edge of the screen has some advantages for fine
mouse pointer targeting." But that is true only when you know where the
target area is before you begin. The other says: "Screen space is
extremely valuable, and we prefer to use pixels for content that is
unique to the focused task, or wider awareness, than for chrome." Menus
are unique to the focused task. Application names are not.

I have a simple proposal to fix these problems: The application title
should be removed from Unity's menu bar. I'm reliably informed that this
would be extremely low risk, in that it would involve changing two lines
of code.

- --
mpt
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