unity-design team mailing list archive

[Spike Burch <spikeb@xxxxxxxxx>]

I can verify that hiding the menus by default is problematic in my
(limited) user testing.

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> After several weeks of trying, last week I finally succeeded in
> installing Natty to test Unity.
>
> I was disappointed to see that in Unity, menus are invisible until you
> mouse over where they are supposed to be. For a window, until you mouse
> over it, the space reserved for its menus is taken up by an application
> or window title. And for the desktop, until you mouse over it, the space
> for its menus is completely empty. I reported a bug about this, but John
> Lea marked it as Invalid on the grounds that "this change request
> contradicts the design". He requested that I discuss it here.
>
> The design John cited is not the menu bar specification
> <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MenuBar>, but a separate "The Unity Menu"
> document that is new to me.
> <https://docs.google.com/View?id=dfkkjjcj_1776g5ztgbc3>
>
> I see four major problems with hiding the menus and covering them with
> an application or window title.
>
> 1.  Most importantly, it makes the menus much harder to use.
>
>    The "The Unity Menu" document says that "The top level of the menu
>    rarely shows significant information (it is not an indicator) - it
>    consists essentially of category headings, like 'File' and 'Edit'
>    and 'View'. None of those add any relevant information to the task
>    at hand, or wider awareness."
>
>    Whoever wrote that is mistaken. Every time the task at hand involves
>    using a menu, it is necessary first to be aware of, and then to move
>    the pointer to, the desired menu. That is much harder to do if the
>    menu is invisible until just after you finish needing to know where
>    it is. Whether the menus collectively are "an indicator" is
>    irrelevant: the first item in the rationale, for what determines
>    whether something appears in the menu bar, has always been "It's
>    not whether it's a status indicator".
> <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MenuBar?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=whether-something-appears.jpg>
>
> 2.  It makes some functions effectively invisible.
>
>    For example, last month Jack Wallen wrote for TechRepublic
>    <http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/x/2291>: "One of the
>    most handy menu entries in GNOME (for me at least) is the Connect
>    to Server entry in the Places menu. This allows the user to connect
>    to nearly any type of server quickly and easily. The user can even
>    connect to a Windows Share from here. In Unity - you won’t find
>    that. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find any means to
>    connect to a server in Ubuntu Unity."
>
>    At the time, I didn't understand how he could have had that problem.
>    Now I do. The "Connect to Server" item, which is in the "Places"
>    menu on the Ubuntu 10.10 desktop, is in the "File" menu on the
>    Natty desktop. But the desktop appears, incorrectly, to have no
>    menus at all.
>
>    The "The Unity Menu" document says "Many modern applications are
>    being designed without substantial menus". The problem with that
>    approach was explained in my initial post introducing the menu bar:
>    it results in gratuitous inconsistency between applications.
>    <http://design.canonical.com/2010/05/menu-bar/#history> But that is
>    beside the point. Hiding menus for windows that *do* rely on them
>    does nobody any good.
>
> 3.  The application or window title becomes ugly when the menus appear.
>
>    For example, when using Nautilus's menus, the menu bar reads
>        File Man File Edit View Go Bookmarks Help.
>
>    Similarly when using Terminal's menus, the menu bar reads
>        Termina File Edit View Search Terminal Help.
>
>    And when using Calculator's menus, the menu bar gets a stutter:
>        Calculat Calculator Mode Help.
>
> 4.  The application or window title and the title bar are redundant, and
>    sometimes inconsistent too.
>
>    For example, when that Calculator window is open, its title bar says
>    "Calculator", and the menu bar pointlessly repeats "Calculator".
>    When a Banshee window is open, its title bar says "Banshee Media
>    Player", and the menu bar repeats "Banshee Media Player". When a
>    PolicyKit authentication alert is open, its title bar says
>    "Authenticate", and the menu bar repeats "Authenticate".
>
>    Other windows are inconsistent. For example, Firefox's title bar
>    says "Mozilla Firefox", but the menu bar disagrees, saying
>    "Firefox Web Browser". Shotwell's title bar says "Shotwell", but
>    the menu bar says "Shotwell Photo Manager". Most amusingly, if you
>    open a presentation in LibreOffice and then open an accompanying
>    spreadsheet, the title bar says "LibreOffice Calc" while the menu
>    bar says "LibreOffice Impress".
>
> There are two paragraphs in the "The Unity Menu" document that I agree
> with. One says: "The top edge of the screen has some advantages for fine
> mouse pointer targeting." But that is true only when you know where the
> target area is before you begin. The other says: "Screen space is
> extremely valuable, and we prefer to use pixels for content that is
> unique to the focused task, or wider awareness, than for chrome." Menus
> are unique to the focused task. Application names are not.
>
> I have a simple proposal to fix these problems: The application title
> should be removed from Unity's menu bar. I'm reliably informed that this
> would be extremely low risk, in that it would involve changing two lines
> of code.
>
> - --
> mpt
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAk1/ozwACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecoCFgCfYeqr3KknjJAgCWe5up2VJRo+
> Ts0AniZYG361yeS762p/lXy8wPTEWXEA
> =EZQQ
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana
> Post to     : ayatana@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>