unity-design team mailing list archive

[Saleel Velankar <svelanka@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday, March 15, 2011 5:34:52 PM Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> I have a simple proposal to fix these problems: The application title
> should be removed from Unity's menu bar. 

Possibly. The titlebar is used to differentiate between two windows of the 
same app, or less used to differentiate between windows of different apps. By 
clicking the maximize button, the user is saying that I want all the available 
screen space to be dedicated to this window (note: its not this app) please 
see my tweak to thorwils idea.


On Tuesday, March 15, 2011 7:28:59 PM Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> If menus are disliked that much, I wonder where the alternatives are?
> Piling everything up in one mega-menu is only acceptable for seldom used
> functionality. Many applications have way to many commands to put them
> into a toolbar or to sprinkle the interface with them.
In the perfect world, there would be button in the toolbar. when you click it 
will pop-up a box saying "what are you looking to do?" and search/display 
through the menu options based on what the user has typed ala GnomeDo/ 
Krunner.

> Though in Emacs, I have been doing fine with no menu at all.
<joke>Emacs is perfect for people with 32 fingers that love to memorize obscure 
codes </joke>

> Anyway, if menus are bad, menus where you can't aim for their top level
> items directly are even worse.
Super Agreed. 
 
> The alternative would be to show both title and menu, but giving the
> menu priority. For habituation and quick aiming, it's important that the
> menu always starts in the same spot from the left (assuming LTR reading
> direction). To guarantee that, without using an offset from the left
> that will always be too small or too large, the title would have to be
> right-aligned to the right side of the window or panel. But
> clipped/faded-out on the right, when necessary.

Here is an idea, make it time based. it being 'giving the preference to'. If I 
am watching a youtube video inside a maximized Firefox windows, and my mouse 
activity is low, then the title should be given the preference. If my 
mouse/keyboard activity picks up then the menu should be given the preference. 
I assume this is technically feasible.