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To rehash a tired argument: Removing the menu from the window to a common location is still a big usability fail. Not because it's worse than having the functi

To rehash a tired argument: Removing the menu from the window to a common location is still a big usability fail. Not because it's worse than having the functionality bound to the window itself (personally I believe it is, but I could get used to it) but because it's the only major Linux desktop that does this, and as such most of the apps anyone is going to run, are going to be built with that in mind. It's usually not such a big deal to overload the menus with Gnome and KDE, but with Unity it is. And having it double as a title bar is just stupid. Screen real estate isn't at the premium they think it is. I tried Unity with 11.04 and hated it. The bugs didn't bother me but the design did. I'll be sticking with KDE.

barrkel 15y ago
I disagree; on most Linux UIs I've seen, screen real estate is at a premium because of over-generous borders, oversized icons, oversized buttons, oversized listbox item sizes, all generally looking like a 96dpi UI rendered on a 75dpi device (I've often wondered if X Window historical baggage and ancient bitmap font sizes had something to do with it). Everything is about 33% oversized. (I'm a fan of the relative information density on Windows. It's really noticeable in file explorer views in details mode; Windows Explorer packs in a lot of information with very thin borders so the text on each line stays large (though the icon for the file is only 16x16), while the nearest equivalent on pretty much any Linux shell file explorer I've used has large inter-item borders that force the detail text to be tiny; and it still doesn't get in as many items as Windows.)
- jeltz 15y ago
  At least in GNOME and XFCE you can decrease the default font size, which is what I did right after installing Debian with XFCE. XFCE also has really slim buttons and borders. Sadly the file manager, Thunar, is not slim at all. So if you have not already given XFCE a try I recommend you do. Personally I wont use Unity until the skin i as slim as XFCE.
rdtsc 15y ago
> Screen real estate isn't at the premium they think it is. It is on netbooks and tablets perhaps... My beef with it currently is that it doesn't work well with focus-follows-mouse. If menu is on the top, and you want to access it, you mouse will eventually bring other apps to the forefront before it reaches the top, so you end up with a menu of a different application than what you intended. But, that is just me with my hand-hacked preferences that have lingered around since 4 or 5 version ago. I bet new users don't have a way to enable focus-follows-mouse...
- pyre 15y ago
  Compiz supports focus follows mouse, though it is broken in 11.04. Maybe they fixed it in 11.10.
- shawndellysse 15y ago
  http://askubuntu.com/questions/10481/does-unity-support-disabling-the-global-application-menu http://askubuntu.com/questions/10481/does-unity-support-disa... The setting to change focus style is somewhere in gconfeditor.
  - rdtsc 15y ago
    Thank you. Yeah that is where I enabled it. Sounds like someone suggests accessing the menu using a key - F10 and not moving the mouse at all. That is not a bad solution, I will try that!
- hristov 15y ago
  "It is on netbooks and tablets perhaps..." And there goes the entire problem with unity. It is a touchscreen tablet UI offered for mouse based computer users. I would have applauded Ubuntu if they made a separate tablet (and perhaps netbook too) distro, but why force me to use it on my desktop?
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    >but why force me to use it on my desktop? // There are quite a few different WM in the ubu' repos. You can choose not to use Unity and do so very easily.
nirvana 15y ago
Apple studied this back in the 1980s. This is why the menubar is at the top of the screen. What they found was, people were able to, much more quickly and accurately, pick the menu item they wanted, because they didn't have to be as precise in their targeting when the menu was at the top of the screen than on the window. If you've grown up with poor copies of the Mac UI (like Windows) then you're used to targeting menu items on a window, and you don't realize that you're slower at it. But you are. It's a lot like the one button mouse issue. People think its worse when they've always had to suffer with 2 button mice.
- WayneDB 15y ago
  If you've grown up using the poorly crafted Mac OS interface, you probably don't realize that almost everything else is slower, despite that one really fast menu access (by mouse only). However, I can Alt-Tab to an app and bring up it's main menu (and hunt through the menu) with only the keyboard. You just can't do that on the Mac. There's a reason most other desktop systems copy the much more logical Windows style instead of the illogical Mac OS style.
  - chc 15y ago
    The reason most desktop systems copy Windows is simply because Windows is the dominant desktop OS. Similarly, most desktop GUIs ape Windows' white cursor rather than the Mac's black cursor and tile desktop icons from the left rather than the right.
  - undees 15y ago
    On the Mac, you can Cmd-Tab to an app and then hit Ctrl-F2 to navigate the menu from the keyboard: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343 http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343 I concede that this doesn't address other objections to a single menu bar, such as identifying the active window / application.
  - Cushman 15y ago
    Because the Windows GUI is based on intuition, and the Mac GUI is based on science?
- 15y ago
pnathan 15y ago
I really prefer a single menu location, actually. IT makes much more intuitive sense to me. Also, screen real estate is always premium for me. I need to see all my code. :)

barrkel 15y ago

I disagree; on most Linux UIs I've seen, screen real estate is at a premium because of over-generous borders, oversized icons, oversized buttons, oversized listbox item sizes, all generally looking like a 96dpi UI rendered on a 75dpi device (I've often wondered if X Window historical baggage and ancient bitmap font sizes had something to do with it). Everything is about 33% oversized. (I'm a fan of the relative information density on Windows. It's really noticeable in file explorer views in details mode; Windows Explorer packs in a lot of information with very thin borders so the text on each line stays large (though the icon for the file is only 16x16), while the nearest equivalent on pretty much any Linux shell file explorer I've used has large inter-item borders that force the detail text to be tiny; and it still doesn't get in as many items as Windows.)

jeltz 15y ago
At least in GNOME and XFCE you can decrease the default font size, which is what I did right after installing Debian with XFCE. XFCE also has really slim buttons and borders. Sadly the file manager, Thunar, is not slim at all. So if you have not already given XFCE a try I recommend you do. Personally I wont use Unity until the skin i as slim as XFCE.

rdtsc 15y ago

> Screen real estate isn't at the premium they think it is. It is on netbooks and tablets perhaps... My beef with it currently is that it doesn't work well with focus-follows-mouse. If menu is on the top, and you want to access it, you mouse will eventually bring other apps to the forefront before it reaches the top, so you end up with a menu of a different application than what you intended. But, that is just me with my hand-hacked preferences that have lingered around since 4 or 5 version ago. I bet new users don't have a way to enable focus-follows-mouse...

pyre 15y ago
Compiz supports focus follows mouse, though it is broken in 11.04. Maybe they fixed it in 11.10.
shawndellysse 15y ago
http://askubuntu.com/questions/10481/does-unity-support-disabling-the-global-application-menu http://askubuntu.com/questions/10481/does-unity-support-disa... The setting to change focus style is somewhere in gconfeditor.
- rdtsc 15y ago
  Thank you. Yeah that is where I enabled it. Sounds like someone suggests accessing the menu using a key - F10 and not moving the mouse at all. That is not a bad solution, I will try that!
hristov 15y ago
"It is on netbooks and tablets perhaps..." And there goes the entire problem with unity. It is a touchscreen tablet UI offered for mouse based computer users. I would have applauded Ubuntu if they made a separate tablet (and perhaps netbook too) distro, but why force me to use it on my desktop?
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  >but why force me to use it on my desktop? // There are quite a few different WM in the ubu' repos. You can choose not to use Unity and do so very easily.

nirvana 15y ago

Apple studied this back in the 1980s. This is why the menubar is at the top of the screen. What they found was, people were able to, much more quickly and accurately, pick the menu item they wanted, because they didn't have to be as precise in their targeting when the menu was at the top of the screen than on the window. If you've grown up with poor copies of the Mac UI (like Windows) then you're used to targeting menu items on a window, and you don't realize that you're slower at it. But you are. It's a lot like the one button mouse issue. People think its worse when they've always had to suffer with 2 button mice.

WayneDB 15y ago
If you've grown up using the poorly crafted Mac OS interface, you probably don't realize that almost everything else is slower, despite that one really fast menu access (by mouse only). However, I can Alt-Tab to an app and bring up it's main menu (and hunt through the menu) with only the keyboard. You just can't do that on the Mac. There's a reason most other desktop systems copy the much more logical Windows style instead of the illogical Mac OS style.
- chc 15y ago
  The reason most desktop systems copy Windows is simply because Windows is the dominant desktop OS. Similarly, most desktop GUIs ape Windows' white cursor rather than the Mac's black cursor and tile desktop icons from the left rather than the right.
- undees 15y ago
  On the Mac, you can Cmd-Tab to an app and then hit Ctrl-F2 to navigate the menu from the keyboard: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343 http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343 I concede that this doesn't address other objections to a single menu bar, such as identifying the active window / application.
- Cushman 15y ago
  Because the Windows GUI is based on intuition, and the Mac GUI is based on science?
15y ago

pnathan 15y ago

I really prefer a single menu location, actually. IT makes much more intuitive sense to me. Also, screen real estate is always premium for me. I need to see all my code. :)