unity-design team mailing list archive

[Niklas Rosenqvist <niklas.s.rosenqvist@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!
I as many have questioned the global menu bar which Unity features. I
believe there are several issues with it as it is today and I will air my
thoughts here.

Many has complained on that it is incredibly frustrating to be working with
on larger monitors. If the active window is in the bottom right corner and
you have the menu at the top (which isn't even visible until you hover it)
it makes no sense what so ever to look for it up there and it's really
ineffective. Consider the following:

2011/5/18 Ralph Green <sirable@xxxxxxxxx>
 > The global menu bar
 > is another matter. It must die. If there is one feature that will
 > drive me away from Unity, this is it. Again, there is no benefit,
 > except on really small screens. And, now, I don't even see the menu
 > until I move the mouse to the upper left hand corner of the screen.
 > That is often a long way from where my program is. This really take a
 > lot longer to operate. I don't understand how anyone could like it.
 > I am not saying they are wrong to like it. I just don't understand
 > how such a crazy thing was adopted. You know this feature was put on
 > the Macs because they had such tiny screens at the time(512 by 384
 > pixels). I have seen Mac people discuss why it is a bad idea in the
 > days of large screens and it only stays because of inertia. And Steve
 > Jobs obsession with simplicity over usability., to be sure.

Though I think that there has been proposed a really good solution to this:

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 7:10 PM, GonzO Rodrigue <worlord668@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
 > [...] B) only appeared in the
 > "panel" space when the app is maximized. Leaving it in the window space
 > makes more sense when not maximized [...]

This way the menu wouldn't be taking up space when the application is
maximized and it would still leave the menu implementation up the developers
to design freely as they want. With this design firefox 4 could have it's
menu button instead of splitting it into a menu to work with the global menu
bar and developers doesn't have to make their programs compatible with the
global menu since it would just melt together the program's title bar with
the panel.

This makes much more sense than today's implementation and it would offer
more effective work flow when you don't have to move across the entire
screen.

There are also more situations where the global menu works like a crippled
narwhal. E.g. when working with programs as GIMP. GIMP has one main
application window and several smaller windows with tools and such and if
you have one of the smaller windows active you can't reach the menu, even if
they are a part of the same application. You must target the main window and
then you can reach the menu.

So what are your thoughts? If anyone already knows how it will be
implemented in 11.10 (maybe from a discussion at UDS) please share your
knowledge!