unity-design team mailing list archive

[Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello folks

I blogged today about a decision we've taken to adopt a single menu in
the panel, for the netbook interface. The blog is at
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/359 and there will be some
additional commentary from MPT and others on design.canonical.com in due
course.

The rationale for the decision is the improved use of vertical space for
the netbook use case, combined with a reduction in clutter for the whole
UI and an improved ability to hit the menu. We feel that issues of the
separation of menu and window are mitigated on small screens, the target
audience of netbooks.

We've discussed the decision with the existing community that formed
around the "Global Menu" project. We won't be adopting the exact same
technology but are going to collaborate around the issues that the
concept triggers: support for toolkits other than Gtk, and applications
which use menus in unusual ways.

One very positive consequence of this decision, of course, is to
mitigate the potential collisions between the menu's and the (x) window
control :-)

Looking forward to the discussion here, and at UDS.

Mark

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