unity-design team mailing list archive

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

> It is available for application indicators, and it's governed rather
> simply.  The action has to be a visible menu item that is in the menu.
> If you hide it, it doesn't work.  If you remove it, it doesn't work.
> This way the middle click always remains a power user feature, but not a
> hidden feature.  And machines without middle click will never loose
> functionality.
>
> As far as which item is chosen, I'm happy to let application authors
> play with that.  They know their applications better than I believe we
> ever will.
>
> In the end, I expect that OMG Ubuntu readers will know what every middle
> click will do and we'll never be able to do a usability study on it
> because no normal user will ever find it :-)
>
>                --Ted

The implementation sounds good, but I'm a tad concerned about how this
will relate to menus in general. I know, there aren't many people who
will middle click to open menus, but it's worth noting that GTK+'s
menu bar has historically worked where pressing any mouse button will
open the menu. Now, doing that has a chance of sometimes performing an
unknown operation, and otherwise opening a menu.

Since Unity's menu bar is effectively the only menu bar (so whatever
it does defines what other menu bars do), perhaps this is a good time
to revisit that behaviour in GTK. Or perhaps this has been pondered
already :)

Dylan