unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ed Lin <edlin280@xxxxxxxxx>]

So this is half serious but something for you all to think about, if
the global menu is such a great idea and we weren't constraint by any
toolkit legacy problems...

http://i.imgur.com/xsD0v.png

Would you use this (without maximizing the window)?

Now think about what this would mean for multi-tasking, is this really
a step forward?

My opinion on this: in a primarily single tasking environment (a
tablet or even netbook maybe) I think _something_ like this actually
is the way forward for the desktop paradigm: less chrome, full focus
on the content, the interface is exactly where it makes the most sense
ergonomically (with a mouse driven interface on the screen edge, on a
tablet maybe left and right where your thumbs are, not the best demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBxaxk9SKQc)
The browser is also a better example than it might appear at first
glance. Remember the browser is the new OS, people use it for
everything, work, games, music, videos, communication. Tabs with only
one web"app" visible doesn't cut it. Back in the netscape days when I
discovered tabbed browsing I switched to one browser window for
everything. These days I often keep several opened, tiled, side by
side, some minimized..

But what would that design mean on the larger widescreen monitor
(naturally fit to accommodate two "pages" side by side like an opened
book)? From what I've seen most people do one or two things at a time,
in the office environment people often have a word processor in the
one half and a file explorer in the other, or mail and browser, or you
know, facebook and business app... The most important issue of the
menubar (besides discoverability which was already covered in actual
user testing so arguing against that really makes no sense at this
point) is multi-tasking. The only reason that isn't glaringly obvious
to anyone is:
people who multi-task a lot know their applications well, they usually
know the keyboard shortcuts and other controls and don't rely so much
on the menu. Full circle back: why can anyone insist that the global
menu is better because it's faster to access when it isn't necessary
to often access it fast, an argument which doesn't even apply to Unity
because of the hover design?

Interim result:
two points go to the global menu, "cleanness of the interface" (which
is very problematic as the user testing showed, the actual solution
here is to write better, cleaner applications) and the mentioned
tiling windows on top of each other.
On the other side we have a few thousand words written against it,
there are so many arguments I really lost track of them. At this point
I'd really like to get an official response from someone @ubuntu.com

You can just say "No" and I'll stop spamming the list with this
important but still single issue. God knows there are many more to
solve...