Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity

[Jarod Wilson]

On May 10, 2011, at 1:45 AM, Tom Metro wrote:

...
>> I've also never liked the Mac-style menus on the top of the screen 
>> rather than in the window title bar. It strikes me as a UI decision that 
>> doesn't scale well. It was fine when the Mac meant the beige toaster 
>> with its 9" display, but when you're talking about 30" behemoths the 
>> menus are too far away from where you are working. Too much mouse 
>> movement, and too much confusion because they're so far away from the 
>> active window.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> Pro: menus are in an absolutely positioned consistent place.

Another pro to consider: menus aren't duplicated needlessly
across multiple instances of the same program. Part of this has
to do with how processes are launch in, say, gnome, vs. in Mac
OS X. Two gnome terminal windows == two different applications,
each with its own menu[*]. Two Terminal terminal windows on OS X
is two windows of the same application. One menu bar instead of
two. Now add a bunch more terminal windows and consider which
one makes better use of screen real estate.

> Con: menus are not visually tied to what they impact; menus are
> inconveniently located at a distance from where you are working.

Regardless of desktop OS and menu location, keyboard shortcuts and
contextual menus ftw. At least in my case, I rarely ever have to
go to the menu bar on any OS.

[*] I actually have recollections of at least early versions of
gnome-shell experimenting with someone grouping these such that
they looked like just one application, but I haven't looked to
see if that made it all the way to gnome 3.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org