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I find it interesting that the Dock is what got copied rather than the much more long-standing (dating back to 1983 with the Apple Lisa) global menubar. A lot

I find it interesting that the Dock is what got copied rather than the much more long-standing (dating back to 1983 with the Apple Lisa) global menubar. A lot of people are saying that the Dock is copied for the purpose of aesthetics, which may be true, but the aesthetic benefit of making the menubar global is arguably greater and comes with less of a functional tradeoff — it reduces the visual redundancy of duplicate window-attached menubars and gets you that clean look that GNOME and a lot of desktop apps are chasing these days, but without replacing proper menus with a messy "junk drawer" hamburger menu. The Dock is fine, but I can take it or leave it. It's not really good enough to have strong feelings about. Not a huge fan of Win9X style taskbars either though, they get cluttered and unpleasant to scan very easily.

LeoPanthera 3y ago
Plasma supports a global menu bar, though it is not the default.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  Yeah, it's great that Plasma makes it an option, but it's somewhat kneecapped by the number of Linux programs that don't make their menus available for Plasma and similar plugins on other DEs (IIRC XFCE has a global menubar plugin) to display. Cross-platform Electron apps on Linux also don't make their menus available, despite almost always having menus under macOS. For the feature to really be usable you'd almost need to make a distro and patch its packages to have global menubar support.
labcomputer 3y ago
One problem with the global menu bar is that it doesn’t work with point-to-focus window managers.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  True, although I think the overlap between DEs making aesthetically-motivated changes and WMs built with point-to-focus in mind is probably small to nonexistent.
Dalewyn 3y ago
My chief criticism with a global menu bar is the breaking of contexts compared to window-specific menu bars. Unless I'm working in a maximized window, I need to take my cursor and thus my attention outside of the window I'm working in. That takes mental effort to switch contexts, longer physical distance moving my hand and arm, and additional time incurred from all that extra work. In a word, it's inefficient.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  Probably depends on way of thinking or workflow. It's never been an issue for me. I also think that regardless, a global menubar is better than a hamburger menu because it allows far more functions to be surfaced in an efficient, consistent, organized manner. Hamburger menus only contain what the developer deems "essential" and have no rhyme or reason, which makes for considerable chunks of functionality that are buried in dialog tunnels.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  Are you familiar with Fitts' law? The advantage of the global menu bar is that you don't have to find it: you just flick your cursor quickly upward, and it will stop at the top of the screen, right on the menu bar. This can be more efficient, unless you have for some reason chosen a flat pointer acceleration curve.
  - teo_zero 3y ago
    Ok, you convinced me about the upward trip. Now what about returning to the app window?
JohnFen 3y ago
The dock is a thing I can tolerate if I have to. A global menubar, however, is something that I find very irritating. I hope that trend never catches on, at least in any way that it can't be disabled.

LeoPanthera 3y ago

Plasma supports a global menu bar, though it is not the default.

kitsunesoba 3y ago
Yeah, it's great that Plasma makes it an option, but it's somewhat kneecapped by the number of Linux programs that don't make their menus available for Plasma and similar plugins on other DEs (IIRC XFCE has a global menubar plugin) to display. Cross-platform Electron apps on Linux also don't make their menus available, despite almost always having menus under macOS. For the feature to really be usable you'd almost need to make a distro and patch its packages to have global menubar support.

labcomputer 3y ago

One problem with the global menu bar is that it doesn’t work with point-to-focus window managers.

kitsunesoba 3y ago
True, although I think the overlap between DEs making aesthetically-motivated changes and WMs built with point-to-focus in mind is probably small to nonexistent.

Dalewyn 3y ago

My chief criticism with a global menu bar is the breaking of contexts compared to window-specific menu bars. Unless I'm working in a maximized window, I need to take my cursor and thus my attention outside of the window I'm working in. That takes mental effort to switch contexts, longer physical distance moving my hand and arm, and additional time incurred from all that extra work. In a word, it's inefficient.

kitsunesoba 3y ago
Probably depends on way of thinking or workflow. It's never been an issue for me. I also think that regardless, a global menubar is better than a hamburger menu because it allows far more functions to be surfaced in an efficient, consistent, organized manner. Hamburger menus only contain what the developer deems "essential" and have no rhyme or reason, which makes for considerable chunks of functionality that are buried in dialog tunnels.
marssaxman 3y ago
Are you familiar with Fitts' law? The advantage of the global menu bar is that you don't have to find it: you just flick your cursor quickly upward, and it will stop at the top of the screen, right on the menu bar. This can be more efficient, unless you have for some reason chosen a flat pointer acceleration curve.
- teo_zero 3y ago
  Ok, you convinced me about the upward trip. Now what about returning to the app window?

JohnFen 3y ago

The dock is a thing I can tolerate if I have to. A global menubar, however, is something that I find very irritating. I hope that trend never catches on, at least in any way that it can't be disabled.