unity-design team mailing list archive

[Paul Sladen <ubuntu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Luke Benstead wrote:
> On 18 February 2011 13:23, Andrew Laignel <a.laignel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > https://wiki.mozilla.org/File:Firefox-4-Mockup-i06-%28Win7%29-%28Aero%29-%28TabsTop%29.png *cough*
> Err... yeah, like that :)

These kinds of menus are okay for very seldomly-used ones---such as
those in a browser, or an instant messaging application---but I've
never been particularly keen on them for menus that actually have to
be *used* (word-processor, drawing application, ...).

My understanding is that humans remember grids: across, then down.

When that type of vertical menu is: down, down, down, ... the instant
positional memory is not there.  My best regular example of this is
the huge right-click menu in GIMP.  After a decade of near-daily use I
still don't have a mental model of what that menu looks like, other
than knowing that the option I want is "somewhere" in 2-3 layers of
side-ways shuffling.

Admittedly I quite happily used the similiarly ballooning side-ways
menus in RiscOS for several years prior to that; compare:

  http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RLXilJdXGMo/0.jpg (RiscOS !Draw)
  http://math.hws.edu/eck/cs120/f02/lab4/gimp_menus.gif (GIMP)

	-Paul