[Ayatana] Unity, menus and large screens

[James Jenner <james.g.jenner@xxxxxxxxx>]

G'day Guys,

I decided to join the Ayatana mailing list so I could help provide feedback or ideas regarding Unity.

Firstly I should say that while I was initially surprised (possibly shocked) by the changes, I quickly grew to enjoy them.

However, unfortunately there is one issue, which may be specific to my circumstances. I have a large monitor (30 inches) running at a high resolution. I am always opening multiple apps and positioning them on the screen in various positions (which the new shortcuts for window positioning make real simple). 

As such the distance from an application to the menu can be quite large. This affects me not just in the time to move the mouse, but also having to adjust my head to look from one position to another. Now remember my screen is 30 inches, so the distance between the application border and the start of the menu can exceed 20 inches (I haven't done exact measurements, but can do if people would like some empirical data) . I find myself having to adjust my head position just to look at the menu in these situations. 

Even if I have two documents open side by side, the fact that the menu is the full width of the window away is annoying because I have to look away from the document to determine the menu.

This is also frustrating with tools like Inkscape and The Gimp where I'm not 100% familiar with various options (weaning myself away from Adobe products) and need to browse the menus to find the item that I'm looking for.

Now if I was running full screen then I wouldn't have a problem (I never do because any window other than a game full screen just looks stupid on my monitor), or if I was on a monitor that is only 20 inches (or so) then I don't think it would be as big an issue. So an option or maybe some intelligence as to when the menu repositions. I'm not sure what the design goals where in placing the menu separate to the application (other than saving screen space, which for me is not a problem), it's not as if people are following the ribbon approach to tool bars which reduces the need for menus greatly.

Personally I'm not a big fan of menus due to the cost of use (mouse clicks, travel, etc). To me button bars, ribbon bars, etc are far more efficient. I just don't see the current Unity approach as working on large screens, until applications migrate away from their dependency on menus. Even then I would rather see menus activated by a border decoration.

Thanks for your time.

Cheers,

James.