unity-design team mailing list archive

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Farran Lee <fuzzle6@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I've not been involved in a mailing list for several years now, so I
> apologise in advance if I do things wrong!
> Also sorry if this is the wrong place to post this - I put them on a bug
> report list a while ago, and somebody suggested that I submit them to you
> guys.
>
> Basically, I made some mockups a while ago (April) for Unity's Global Menu,
> which everyone seems to be having trouble with.
> They're quite hard to explain properly, so it's probably easier for you to
> just look at them. I've tried to explain what's going on in the description
> of each image.
> They're obviously not perfect - I've just pulled a bunch of ideas together
> and tried to make a usable concept.
> I am now aware that other people have made similar mockups to mine, but at
> the time I hadn't seen any of them.
>
> Here's the link: http://anaershadowynomaly.deviantart.com/gallery/29691776
>
> Please comment and criticize these as much as necessary, then I can try to
> improve the design.
> I'm more than happy to make more mockups to incorporate new or different
> ideas.
>
> Hope that all made sense :D

I do like that you're pondering how to make menu bars scale below
their preferred size. That is something missing from GTK+, and it does
cause funny behaviour sometimes. Does anyone know if they would be
interested in such behaviour upstream, or was it a conscious decision
to have menu bars so strictly sized?

In your mockup, window titles have a direct impact on menu usability,
which is a relationship that doesn't exist with other desktop
environments. In addition, window titles have a direct impact on one's
ability to drag a window. From the looks of it, the title becomes the
one draggable area on a window title bar, and since people are
encouraged to make titles shorter…

I'm concerned about both of those relationships, especially together.
I don't think we have the power to convince every app developer out
there that short window titles are actually a good idea, and I don't
think end users will appreciate the limited draggable area —
especially with the GIMP example.

Dylan