unity-design team mailing list archive

["frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx" <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 15:56, Walter Wittel <wittelw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I agree the File menu is not needed for the Calculator example because
> really all it would  would only contain Quit.


;)


> Now I see that both the File and Edit
> functions have been combined nicely on a single Calculator menu,


Calculator is a positive example, its menus make sense and they are to the
point.
The "Calculator" menu could of course be thinned down to "clear" and "Quit".



> but
> it is really a File-Edit menu (should this be called "System" since it
> is functionality that interacts with the rest of the system rather
> than only the application?).
>

The "system" metaphor requires a lot of abstraction to understand, i don't
think it comes to the user intuitively.

I guess what I fear is that getting rid of these conventions without a
> suitable replacement will make it hard to find common functionality in
> applications.


it is difficult to associate meaning already with abstract metaphors such as
"File" or "Edit".
Consistently naming the first Menu after the app itself would help a lot,
apart from the fact that GNOME Shell already implement this nicely..
If the app gives its main window a different name, e.g. "Contact List"
instead of "Empathy", it may be wise to name the first menu after that
window title.
In Empathy's case, the first menu is called Chat, which duplicates an entry
in the messaging menu, i don't think that is so wise after all.

Maybe "System" stuff should be moved out of the
> application to a common place in the shell and a callback mechanism
> provided to notify the application, [...]
>

+1
the very first example for what should be moved out of the application menu
is "Help".
Help should be a context driven Indicator Menu imo.
The second example for system stuff that doesn't belong into an
application's menu is Fullscreen (F11).
This has more to do with the window manager than with the app itself, even
though every app needs to have its own tailored fullscreen mode.
The third thing i can think of would be Recent.. Windows7 has an interesting
approach here, showing recent documents above the window list button upon
right-click.. not so bad!