Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Single menu bar for Ubuntu

markshuttleworth.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 57 posts

Re: Single menu bar for Ubuntu

#21

Post by blasdel »

leif wrote: post #11

This is probably the only netbook remix feature I want ported to the regular builds. Globalmenu is broken in subtle but dealbreaking ways, and getting a large part of the ubuntu team on it should sort it out so I can finally use it. I hope there's a reasonable path to including it in the standard desktop.

I don't think they could port this to the regular builds without it being even more broken than globalmenu.

This is only attainable when all windows are always maximized like they are in Netbook Remix, especially in combination with their design choice of having the window title display there by default with the menu appearing on rollover/alt. This all works because they're using a custom (probably non-reparenting) window manager and can do whatever they want.

This has the added bonus of potentially working with third-party apps that they can't diddle with the menus of — in this case they can just draw the window title decorator on top of the menus. They might even just take this approach all the time and avoid the globalmenu weirdness.

Re: Single menu bar for Ubuntu

#22

Post by windsurfer »

I find that a lot of applications do not need to show the menu most of the time. For most users, in my experience, the menu bar need only be shown some of the time (with some exceptions such as word processors and large programs). Toolbars are usually much more important, as are keyboard shortcuts.

A right-click on the window decoration/titlebar to show the menu would be a much more elegant solution for many applications. This interaction with the window manager could also introduce some interesting application-specific window management, such as "arrange to fill screen" for gnome-terminal, or "optimize width" for Firefox, for instance.

Re: Single menu bar for Ubuntu

#23

Post by Zev »

div wrote: post #14
lincolnq wrote: post #10

I really admire Shuttleworth and the rest of the Ubuntu design team for being courageous about making basic changes to the desktop UI. Open source tends to produce a lot of design-by-committee or completely undesigned software, so having somebody making big decisions and experimenting is really valuable. Nobody else big is really doing this. There are plenty of alternative window managers for Linux or whatever, but f…

Agreed. It's good to see him take this benevolent dictator approach and have the ambition of outdoing OSX in the user experience department. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Shuttleworth-...

... and have the ambition of outdoing OSX in the user experience department.

Is it really "outdoing OSX" if the UI is being done for a market that Apple isn't and doesn't seem to have an inclination of targeting? At least, for what the UI discussed in the initial link for this topic is about.

Re: Single menu bar for Ubuntu

#24

Post by Zak »

defenestrator wrote: post #17
Zak wrote: post #5

Ubuntu has been making a lot of UI changes lately. I can't figure out if they're really being innovative or if they're trying to copy Apple. KDE had something like this as an option in 2.x and 3.x, though it appears to be gone from 4. It only supported KDE apps and therefore didn't provide a very good overall user experience. I always liked the Mac's global menu bar, so I kind of hope they can pull it off.

I'd like to ask why people think "copying apple" is a bad thing. They "copied microsoft" with how KDE looked before and now with a similar look with Gnome to OS X. Good for them. At this rate Linux will have it's very own unified UI system in place sometime in 2020 and it will be better than both. For that, I can't wait! (I never use sarcasm, just in case anyone was wondering)

I can't speak for anyone else, but I didn't say copying Apple is a bad thing. I think copying Apple is a pretty decent way to design a UI if you're not good at it yourself. It is, of course more admirable to come up with a good, original design, but I'm happy about anything that results in a good user experience.

Re: Single menu bar for Ubuntu

#25

Post by sampo »

A bit unrelated note, but if vertical screen estate is valuable also in normal laptops, why aren't more people putting the toolbars to the sides ot the screen? As most laptops are widescreen anyway these days.

Re: Single menu bar for Ubuntu

#26

Post by sp332 »

Zak wrote: post #5

Ubuntu has been making a lot of UI changes lately. I can't figure out if they're really being innovative or if they're trying to copy Apple. KDE had something like this as an option in 2.x and 3.x, though it appears to be gone from 4. It only supported KDE apps and therefore didn't provide a very good overall user experience. I always liked the Mac's global menu bar, so I kind of hope they can pull it off.

I thought the article made it pretty clear that they aren't following in Apple's footsteps. They are working on an optimal environment for netbooks (which Apple doesn't even make), and trying to go beyond the Apple UI to something even better. Do you mistrust these statements for some reason?

Re: Single menu bar for Ubuntu

#27

Post by aidenn0 »

1) How is this better than just autohiding the panel?

2) The main reason why this would be normally bad for me is that focus-follows-mouse seems to be incompatible with a global menu. On a netbook most apps are maximized so I can see that as being not so bad.

Re: Single menu bar for Ubuntu

#28

Post by potatolicious »

Zev wrote: post #23
div wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It's good to see him take this benevolent dictator approach and have the ambition of outdoing OSX in the user experience department. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Shuttleworth-...

... and have the ambition of outdoing OSX in the user experience department. Is it really "outdoing OSX" if the UI is being done for a market that Apple isn't and doesn't seem to have an inclination of targeting? At least, for what the UI discussed in the initial link for this topic is about.

Sure it is - it may not be competing directly with OSX hardware-wise, but at the end of the day they are all desktop/laptop UIs.

Re: Single menu bar for Ubuntu

#29

Post by theBobMcCormick »

leif wrote: post #11

This is probably the only netbook remix feature I want ported to the regular builds. Globalmenu is broken in subtle but dealbreaking ways, and getting a large part of the ubuntu team on it should sort it out so I can finally use it. I hope there's a reasonable path to including it in the standard desktop.

Ahem.. from the article:

> However, it will be straightforward to use this on your desktop too, if you want, and we’d encourage people to try with that configuration.

So yeah, it sounds like they're happy to have people experiment with this in the regular desktop edition, but they're not ready to commit to it in that edition yet.

Re: Single menu bar for Ubuntu

#30

Post by kylec »

sampo wrote: post #25

A bit unrelated note, but if vertical screen estate is valuable also in normal laptops, why aren't more people putting the toolbars to the sides ot the screen? As most laptops are widescreen anyway these days.

It's hard to read vertical text
Post reply on HN