unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ian Santopietro <isantop@xxxxxxxxx>]

"""
For fixing the gap, I'm going to suggest something controversial,
but that I wanted to suggest for a long time anyway: dropping the
minimize and maximize buttons, following Gnome3's direction and
under their same arguments.
"""

I can see getting rid of the maximize button, as Gnome has a point there.
However, I don't feel their argument for getting rid of the Minimize button
applies to Unity. It works great for Gnome, but we still have somewhere to
minimize windows to in Unity, thus the Minimize button has a point. And,
three buttons provides a natural feel and is aesthetically pleasing. You
can't get that unless you go down to one; two won't work. And, like I said,
we need to keep the minimize button while it does something.

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 10:14, Conscious User <conscioususer@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>
> Ian Santopietro wrote:
> > What about flashing the menu with the title for the first, say,
> > five seconds that the window is open. That gives an indication as to
> > where the menu is, reduces visual clutter, and allows the user to get
> > a quick preview of what menu headers are available (File, Edit, etc.)
> > without losing the supposed benefit of the global menu. Perhaps a nice
> > quick fading animation would help keep this from being jarring.
>
>
> Frankly, this sounds like the kind of heat-of-the-moment workaround
> that brought Unity to its current state in the first place. The
> impression I have is the current design is a pile of workarounds:
>
> + Let's merge the titlebar and the panel when the window is maximized
>  and show the menubar. The title is not that important.
>
> - Oops, now the menubar position differs in maximized windows because
>  of the buttons.
>
> - Ok, then let's fix it on that position.
>
> - Oops, ugly gap for non-maximized windows.
>
> - Ok, let's put the title there.
>
> - Oops, titles can have different sizes.
>
> - Ok, let's truncate it.
>
> - Oops, this is ugly.
>
> - Ok, let's show the entire title by default and the menu on hover.
>
> - Oops, now it's inconsistent with maximized windows.
>
> - Ok, let's do the same for maximized windows. Hey, this brings the
>  title back for maximized windows. Win!
>
> With admittedly some poetic license, this is how I picture it: a
> series of local optimizations losing track of global optimization.
>
> Instead of trying to fix the current situation, I prefer going
> back to when the menubar was fully visible and the titlebar
> didn't merge with the panel, and restarting to think from there.
>
> My personal suggestion would be dropping the title in the panel as
> mpt suggested, but keeping the idea of merging the titlebar and the
> panel. This means dropping the title entirely in the maximized
> case, yes. I don't think anyone would really care.
>
> For fixing the gap, I'm going to suggest something controversial,
> but that I wanted to suggest for a long time anyway: dropping the
> minimize and maximize buttons, following Gnome3's direction and
> under their same arguments.
>
> This would leave only the space of a single close button to worry
> about and this could be addressed by something with a fixed size
> that does not need to be truncated: AN ICON.
>
> Matter of fact, I WOULD suggest placing this icon even when the
> window is maximized and storing a menu with window management
> options in it, just like you already have depending on your
> metacity settings. Close *is* a destructive function you
> don't want near "File", after all... But I won't seriously
> support this second suggestion for the moment, because I
> suspect that would make closefests of maxmized windows too
> inneficient, and this is bad for netbook users.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
>
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-- 
Ian Santopietro
CEO - Prodigy Games

"Eala Earendel enlga beorohtast
 Ofer middangeard monnum sended"

Pa gur yv y porthaur?

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