unity-design team mailing list archive

[Xavier Guillot <Valeryan_24@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

My 2 cents also about global menu, as just a normal and daily user (both 
personal and professional use of Ubuntu), not a developer nor a 
designer. I like it very much as it is right now, because :

- It allows space saving and is very nice

- For me it is not a problem that window title hides the menu at first 
until we go with mouse on it. Apart new users - but those will also have 
to learn Unity, Dock, Linux... we know it and it is very common, easy 
after to get at the right place to see the menu. Often, there are 
buttons for most common actions in the soft that replace it.

- there is homogeneity (I could say Unity !) between all applications, 
even Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and all things related to menus 
are in panel at top of the screen. It does not work for the moment for 
softs like Videolan but as it is not a native Ubuntu application, I 
understand it is not a top priority.

On the contrary, for Videolan, it's better because most often I use it 
un-maximized, so I have menus near the window.

That's the second point, the only thing I would change to Global Menu IMHO :

Keep window title over-riding menus and see them when mouseover, but for 
un-maximized window, as the title is displayed in the window, put also 
the menus on mouseover in this place in the window, it allows less mouse 
move to activate them. Some apps, like Videolan, Empathy... are commonly 
used in small size and placed everywhere in the screen, not always at top.

Keep maximized and minimized buttons please, it's perfect like that.

Remember position of a window : with Tomboy for example, even if I 
maximize a note, at next startup, it re-launches reduced in top left 
corner...

By the way, it will be impossible to satisfy everybody, so we'll see 
what it's decided, the less we can do is to explain our choices and 
their consistency.

It's just surprising that such an important discussion is not solved and 
takes place 1 month before final release !

I also hope that, perhaps not for Natty but for 11.10, Ubuntu will allow 
us a little configuration as it was fully possible in Gnome panel - for 
example dash, apps and Places shortcuts, order on the windows in the 
screen for switch between different instances...

Best regards,

Xavier