unity-design team mailing list archive

[Luke Benstead <kazade@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 1 November 2010 13:11, David Prieto <frandavid100@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
>  I don't mean to sound rude, but did you even read the answers to the link
>> you posted?
>> One of them shows this blueprint which wouldn't use the global menu for
>> the desktop version.
>>
>> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/packageselection-desktop-n-specialized-unity-form-factor
>>
>> So it seems the desktop version would have room to innovate when it comes
>> to the menu.  Do you have any particular ideas?
>>
>
> Mark, that blueprint was apparently opened by a community member<http://askubuntu.com/questions/10693/how-closely-will-unity-follow-the-desktop-version-specification/>and does not reflect the actual plans for Unity. That said, I do agree with
> having the global menu even in the Desktop version of Unity.
>
>
>
My question is why?

When they were implemented in UNE we had a great blog post by MPT about the
reasoning: http://design.canonical.com/2010/05/menu-bar/

It made sense. Netbooks have limited vertical space, UNE focuses one window
at a time, global menus are a perfect fit.

At the same time Mark posted on his blog (
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/359) with the following quote:

"There are outstanding questions about the usability of a panel-hosted menu
on much larger screens, where the window and the menu could be very far
apart. Those questions are greatly diminished in the netbook environment, by
definition."

Again, clarifying that although they make perfect sense on netbook
resolutions, they won't necessarily make sense on desktops.

Perhaps we could start removing menus, and specifying a standard, consistent
way to do so (e.g. like Chrome). Perhaps the menus should appear in the huge
space we've opened up to the right of the title bar. Perhaps there is
another way to go, or perhaps we already have an optimal setup. We won't
know without doing usability testing and making sure we aren't making a
mistake.

Instead, we appear to be plagiarizing Apple's menubar just because we can.
On top of that it currently won't be consistent as not all the common UI
toolkits support it. So we are introducing inconsistency, and massive
behavioural change that could very well be less optimal than our current
solution, but without any concrete reasons.

To reiterate, I understand the reasoning for the global menu on netbooks,
and I totally agree. Why is a global menu better on a modern high-resolution
or multiple-monitor desktop than the current system?

Luke.