unity-design team mailing list archive

[David Stevenson <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 27/10/10 21:53, Daniel Silva wrote:
>  I think Vincent Moulin hit the nail in the head with his idea of windows not 
> maximized having their menus inside of them instead of the top.
.......
+1
> 
> There is only one problem, windows that don't get maximized, yet are big enough 
> to fill the available area, in this case there is a tremendous waste of space, 
> with the empty global menu on top, the titlebar of the window, and the local 
> menu bar of the app, and only then the app itself. Of course you could say that 
> the user would understand that by maximizing the app the free space dedicated to 
> the app would increase, but I don't know how clever users are in this respect 
> (some kind of test could clarify this). One possible solution to this "problem" 
> (I'm not sure if it's really a big issue, I mean, users should get that to 
> increase space they could maximize the app, right?) is to make it so that all 
> apps open maximized, but then there's the problem of users who want to just open 
> a little program, like a text editor, or a file manager window (or two),  to 
> edit some small script, move or copy a file from here to there (or having a 
> small script in a small editor program, and a console open to run/compile it), 
>  For these users, having all apps maximized is contrary to what they are used 
> to, and may push them away from unity.

I do not think this is a big problem. It is only a problem if you have
one maximised window and a near maximised window with focus. Then a
visual clue is needed to tell you not to use the global menu for the
focus window. Greyed out menu? maybe that is extra noise too much or if
you click on global menu the maximised app comes to the front?

David