unity-design team mailing list archive

[shane lee <shaneymail@xxxxxxxxx>]

I agree about LIM.  I used a similar system on KDE (oxygen-appmenu) and at
first I liked it a lot but over time it becomes a huge annoyance.
It feels inconvenient when you are just trying to get to a particular menu
item quickly (which is where the HUD could prove invaluable) and it can be
frustrating when you open a submenu and the mouse goes slightly in the
wrong place and in trying to correct you end up losing the menu and have to
start again.
As far as I'm concerned, LIM is NOT the way to go unless it is optional and
not default.

As far as your idea goes for integrating into the titlebar:
This is something I have also suggested in various places and seems the
perfect solution.
The menu is out of sight when not needed but just as easy to access as
traditional (boring) window menus.
The best bit is, it's consitent with the global menu so users who choose to
have the menu on the menubar or integrated into individual windows would
still be instantly familiar with the behavior (windo title replaced by menu
on mouse-over).

My only concern about your specific idea is the menu icon may be too small
a target for many users.
Discovery probably wouldn't be a problem since users would likely
mouse-over the menu icon just to see what it is but more experienced users
would want to move their mouse where the expect the menu entry to be, not
move to the menu icon then move across to the menu entry.

I think for such an idea to fully work, one would need to be able to place
the mouse in any part of the title bar.



On 14 March 2012 00:11, Faheem Padia <f_padia@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  Sorry to re-post but I've been advised that emailing all contacts the way
> I had first time wasn't the best way of starting a discussion so this
> should correct that...
>
> Hello to all,
>
> I have just joined the list because I had a design idea for the
> implementation of the locally integrated menus that are supposed to be
> introduced at some point. I originally put the idea on brainstorm but it
> was marked as 'not an idea' on the basis that unity design is actively
> discussed in other places. I guessed this was on such place where my
> idea might be more appropriately voiced but if I am wrong please let me
> know. Anyway on to the idea...
>
> Basically from the opinions of other Ubuntu users I have read (mostly on
> OMGUbuntu) I understand that LIM is not particularly popular in its
> current form. The 2 main criticisms I have come across commonly are that
> 1. having a vertical menu is not convenient and requires re-learning the
> arrangement of menu items unnecessarily and
> 2. implementing LIM would mean an additional click is required to
> actually see the menu which is counter-productive
>
> so my idea so solve both of these would be to have an animated reveal of
> the menu horizontally in the window title bar when the mouse hovers over
> the menu icon. This would keep the menu as close to how it is currently
> but also introduce the LIM concept of having the menu attached to the
> title bar of an application. This solution also doesnt introduce any new
> problems of dragging windows (that I have come across from other ideas)
> since the menu only reveals when the mouse passes over the menu icon and
> not over the title bar in general.
>
> I'm sure a number of ideas for this have been explored and I apologise
> if this particualr idea has also been discussed but it would be
> interesting to hear other peoples opinions nonetheless.
>
> Thanks
>
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