In my spare time, I'm working on creating a
traditional windowed application that will have a menubar. I find
it important to integrate with Unity, leading me to an important
question: What behavior is the best to adopt?
As I see it, there are three options:
- I can have windows each have their own specific menubar as
needed and let Unity take it out and put it in the top as is
usual now.
- I can push the application to use only one window so that
the menubar becomes a non-issue.
- I can work on an application-wide menu.
And for the issues I see with these approaches:
- This creates inconsistencies with the launcher being
per-application in its design. The launcher is based on the
application, not on its constituent windows.
- Not all applications can force their system into a single
window interface with the limitations of current GTK
technology. (At least to my own satisfaction given the
different models needed for different aspects of the
application.)
- The way that Unity currently grabs the menubar from
applications is on a per-window basis. More or less
literally ripping the menubar from the application. This
makes any application-wide menu feel like a hack personally.
I feel like it's obvious which approach I'd prefer, but I'm
interested in feedback in which scenario is the one most in line
with Ubuntu's future. I know that one of the ultimate goals
stated my MPT was to be able to provide a default set of menus
for every application. Then again, we have one of the default
applications forgoing menus altogether (Ubuntu One Control
Panel).
So which approach is condoned?
Additional question: What should the nomenclature of menus
be? Are we to adopt the inherited behavior for classic GNOME
applications where the first menu name should be relevant to the
application? (I.E. Rhythmbox's first menu being named "Music",
or Empathy's "Chat")
Or the adopt the newer GNOME behavior that will appear when
using an application on OS X? (I.E. The name of the application
being the first menu [in my opinion alleviating some of the
global menu design issues] found in this
link
from another recent Ayatana posting.)
Thanks for your time.
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I think this is one of the main problems in the unity design. If you
want to be shure you'll have to wait for the HIG for Ubuntu.