unity-design team mailing list archive

[Allan Caeg <allancaeg@xxxxxxxxx>]

Let's try this<http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2010-July/msg00022.html>again.

Upstream people are innovating when it comes to the menu bars and window
borders. This is very obvious in popular web browsers: Firefox, Chrome, and
Opera. Chrome is so liberal that it draws its own window border.

Opera guys could be limited by the Linux desktop conventions and technical
limitations so they settled with
this<http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/7135/screenshot1rd.png>
.

As for Firefox, their UX guys respect the platform's conventions so they
didn't add the Firefox
button<https://www-trunk.stage.mozilla.com/img/firefox/beta/4/features/screen-firefox-button.png>
to
Firefox 4 Beta (yet, at least). They're also limited by technical issues so
they can't provide the option to add it yet.

The issue is great cross-platform apps are replacing the menu bar with a
menu button (Firefox Button for Firefox, Opera button for Opera, and some
unnamed button for Chrome) and tweaking the window borders. However, they're
limited in the Linux desktop because of technical and UX issues. Tweaking
the window border and menu bar break things and violate conventions.

Conventions in Windows and OS X are evolving (see the ribbon interface and
app buttons on Office, Paint, etc.) while the Linux desktop is limited
(probably) because we can't make new things work everywhere (different
window managers, desktop environments, etc.).

What do we do about this? People involved in the Windicators project (I'm
not) may know something that could help.

-- 
Regards,
Allan
http://www.google.com/profiles/AllanCaeg#about<http://www.google.com/profiles/allancaeg#about>
+63 918 948 2520