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This is one of the reasons why I’m a super fan of the macOS global menubar. It’s always present and cannot be hidden by app developers, and so there’s no reaso

This is one of the reasons why I’m a super fan of the macOS global menubar. It’s always present and cannot be hidden by app developers, and so there’s no reason to not populate it, and thus the menubar serves as a consistently available master index of the program’s functions. That alone makes it invaluable.

chrismorgan 10mo ago
I’m extremely disappointed Ubuntu gave up on Unity. It had the same basic concept, and menus being searchable was so good. GNOME’s determined direction (Adwaita) is so dumb for anything but small, simple apps. Just hopelessly bad. Mind you, app-defined command palettes can be better than a global one because they can provide more information and context and augment it with other widgets as appropriate. The best command palettes are not just a searchable version of the menu, they add more.
- cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
  I think probably app-defined palettes and a global menu is best possible combo. The app-defined palette enables more rich functionality as you’ve mentioned, while the system-owned global menu provides a consistent way to see everything an app is capable of without hunting and pecking through the palette. The menu also serves as a unified API for assistive and automation technology to interact with software and allows users to choose how the menus are displayed (don’t like a top-aligned menubar? Cool, your desktop can present it as window attached menus, a pie menu, or NeXT style floating menus or anything else you can imagine).
zapzupnz 10mo ago
Those who undervalue this don’t realise that the Mac menu bar is also the standard mechanism for defining keyboard shortcuts; as long as it has an entry in the menu bar, it can have keyboard shortcuts assigned and even reassigned from System Settings. There’s incentive for the menu bar to be properly populated with all the functions that a program offers. Mac users expect it. Compare with non-standard Mac apps (mainly Electron apps or ports from other OS), modern Windows apps, and many Linux apps where the menu bar is often a second class citizen or completely absent, leaving you to the whims of the developer rather than enjoying conformance to a system-wide standard.
- cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
  Yep. Nothing screams “phoned in” like a Mac app with an empty menubar.
  - zapzupnz 10mo ago
    And nothing screams "has never had the pleasure" like a Windows or Linux user who says "who cares if there's no menu bar?" ;-)

chrismorgan 10mo ago

I’m extremely disappointed Ubuntu gave up on Unity. It had the same basic concept, and menus being searchable was so good. GNOME’s determined direction (Adwaita) is so dumb for anything but small, simple apps. Just hopelessly bad. Mind you, app-defined command palettes can be better than a global one because they can provide more information and context and augment it with other widgets as appropriate. The best command palettes are not just a searchable version of the menu, they add more.

cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
I think probably app-defined palettes and a global menu is best possible combo. The app-defined palette enables more rich functionality as you’ve mentioned, while the system-owned global menu provides a consistent way to see everything an app is capable of without hunting and pecking through the palette. The menu also serves as a unified API for assistive and automation technology to interact with software and allows users to choose how the menus are displayed (don’t like a top-aligned menubar? Cool, your desktop can present it as window attached menus, a pie menu, or NeXT style floating menus or anything else you can imagine).

zapzupnz 10mo ago

Those who undervalue this don’t realise that the Mac menu bar is also the standard mechanism for defining keyboard shortcuts; as long as it has an entry in the menu bar, it can have keyboard shortcuts assigned and even reassigned from System Settings. There’s incentive for the menu bar to be properly populated with all the functions that a program offers. Mac users expect it. Compare with non-standard Mac apps (mainly Electron apps or ports from other OS), modern Windows apps, and many Linux apps where the menu bar is often a second class citizen or completely absent, leaving you to the whims of the developer rather than enjoying conformance to a system-wide standard.

cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
Yep. Nothing screams “phoned in” like a Mac app with an empty menubar.
- zapzupnz 10mo ago
  And nothing screams "has never had the pleasure" like a Windows or Linux user who says "who cares if there's no menu bar?" ;-)