unity-design team mailing list archive

[Luke Morton <luke.morton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2010-05-17 at 18:47 -0700, Tyler Brainerd wrote:
> I know, I know, we just had an announcement about changing menu's over
> to global menu's for the UNE. But seriously, how necessary is 4 menus
> in the calculator application "gcalctool"? The only menu options that
> have anything to do with actual calculator options are under the view
> menu. The rest is silly and redundant.
> 
> 
> I just wrote a fairly long blog post on my blog here, along with
> mockups and what not:
> http://tjamesubuntu.blogspot.com/2010/05/re-thinking-desktop.html
> 
> 
> about how silly most apps menu's are. I'm hoping that we can maybe
> pool some resources on looking at what is and what isn't necessary in
> default applications in Ubuntu, although I'm not under any impression
> that this will be something to be put directly in default Ubuntu.
> However, I do think it is the sort of mod that can gain traction
> similar to Nautilus-Elementary if we can get applications repackaged
> with cleaned up and optimized menus.

"Cleaned up and optimised"; sounds like a good idea. How would you do
that for the gcalctool menus? (They seem pretty good to me.)

General comments:
(Pertaining to the removal of menus and replacement with toolbar menus
as mentioned in your blog post.)

1. Menus provide access to functions that might be otherwise obscured,
infrequently used or hard to access--especially for people who cannot
use pointing devices.

For example, I can tell that if I want to insert something into this
email I can press Alt+I to get the insert menu, even though I've never
used it before. If that menu were represented by an icon in a toolbar,
how would I get to it without having to tab through the entire
interface?

2. Menus provide a convenient reference list of keyboard accelerators.
If that menu were represented by an icon in a toolbar, how would I get
to it without having to tab through the entire interface?

Take gcalctool for example. If it didn't have a menu, and you couldn't
use your mouse, how would you switch to a different mode? Quit the
application? Input an ASCII character?

3. A menu by itself takes up less space than a toolbar by itself

Removing the menu in gcalctool in the same way that Nautilus-Elementary
removes the menu would mean that we'd have to add a toolbar for the
functions that have no-where else to go. (I don't think this is
particularly important though.) 
None of these are absolute barriers to your idea, but they are things
that need to be considered/resolved.