disable autohide AppMenu (global menu)

[klap-in]

Binary package hint: unity

I know the design idea of the autohide. http://answerleaks.com/question/ubuntu/22486/why-does-unity-hide-the-menubar

But now i need to use a menu entry in two steps: first move the global menu to show it and next move to the right entry.
So i wish to show always the global menu (with beneath the title).
Can you add this option somewhere (at least in gconfediter).

[Harry van Haaren (harryhaaren)]

Hit the <mod> key (aka windows key), the menu pops up. That's the best workaround I think. Marking bug as Opinion for now

[Brent Thomson (diepiapaopolopo)]

First, I agree that there should at least be an option of not hiding the "File Edit View Tools Help" menu automatically. IMO, hiding this until a user mouses over it is a poor design decision. It completely preempts the ability to have self-instructing menus. With the menu hidden, the user must (1) discover that there's a menu there if they mouse over it and (2) perform some action before being given information about what menu actions or types of actions are available within the application. Microsoft tried the same sort of thing with the magically collapsing menus in Office a few years back--to pretty much universal dissatisfaction. A well-designed menu system should encourage the user to learn about and start using functionality with which they may not be familiar, not hide it from them.

Second, UI changes like this won't encourage Linux users to evangelize among their less-technical peers. Moving the application menu from the application window is a pretty dramatic departure from what most non-linux users are used to (Windows). It's probably still OK, though, if the menu is present and visible somewhere. You can imagine the inevitable late-night phone calls:

Newbie: How do I _____?
Expert: Click Tools, then Add Ons...
Newbie: I don't see Tools.
Expert: You're using Firefox, right?
Newbie: Right.
Expert: It's in the toolbar. Right next to Help.
Newbie: No toolbar.
Expert: Seriously?
Newbie: Seriously.
Expert: *&$*&#!! OK, the menu is up at the top of your screen.
Newbie: No, it's not.
Expert: You can't see it, but it's there. Move your mouse to the top of the screen.
Newbie: Why the f*^$# did they hide that?

Making current Ubuntu users/evangelists/fanatics feel like they have to apologize for something being harder than it needs to be is a great way to discourage them from trying to get others to switch to it. Increasing the likelihood and duration of the inevitable you-told-me-to-use-this-and-now-you-have-to-help-me support calls is an even better way to turn people off from evangelism. I'm not saying that this one issue will make anyone stop using or supporting Ubuntu, but if there were five issues like this? Ten? A hundred?

Finally, I have yet to see a combination of application name (even a browser showing the name of a web page--FF doesn't even put the page name in the app menu in Unity) plus the application menu that even comes close to reaching the notification area. I wonder where the value in hiding the menu at all is.

-Brent

[Fritz Heinrichmeyer (fritz-heinrichmeyer)]

Applications with very small window size on common HD screens like xterm/gnome-terminal should have their own menus. Often they reside far away from the top panel.

Maybe there should be a "25% rule": Application windows with less than 25% of screen occupation get their own menus. Of course there should be a configuration program that could switch off this option in the same way as the IMO annoying auto full screen mode ("75% rule").

All large windows ("new 75% rule") IMO should show their global menus.

[Fritz Heinrichmeyer (fritz-heinrichmeyer)]

in unity-2d (i use it from ppa) i can disable the 75% rule, maybe it some lines of qml are enough to establish the 25% rule.

[nsasherr (nsasherr)]

Having two different behaviours for menus based on window size would be very confusing. It seems to me that changing the menu's location based on window size would cause more problems than it would solve. It soulds like this would make for a very inconsistent experience -- now in order to use the menu, you first have to figure out where it is, and resizing the window would make the local menu bar disappear suddenly.

Maybe a better solution would be to let power users add exceptions for certain applications to force them to show a local menu bar as well as the global menu bar?

[Danillo (danillo)]

If the problem is inconsistency, some applications have no menu altogether but we can only find out about that after we hover the mouse on the panel. At least in this case, the presence/absence of the menu is not visual clutter, it's an important information. Besides, one of the objectives of the global menu is to save vertical space, but this makes no sense when the window is not maximized.

I love global menu, but I've seen many people confused by it. An option to control the behaviour of the global menu should be added to CompizConfig.

[Fritz Heinrichmeyer (fritz-heinrichmeyer)]

after some more month of usage of unity my wish would be

1. switchable autohide of global menu via ccsm . I would switch this off
2. switchable global menu only for maximized windows. I would switch this on.
3. no 75% rule (can already be switched off by ccsm).

[Jeremy Sequoia (jeremyhu)]

ping *please* give a customization option for this. It is really fricken annoying. The space in the bar isn't doing anything, so you might as well use it rather than waste my time first moving to the bar then moving to the correct entry. Having it autohide completely defeats the HCI efficiency involved in moving it to the top of the screen.

[Fabian Bernhard (fbernhard)]

Can someone please point us to the relevant section(s) in the code so that we can write a patch for this? Thank you!

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

the status was incomplete because this bug needs design input, moving back to incomplete.

[Chad Germann (cgermann)]

Vanishing global menu is annoying while working with an IDE to the point i am forced to install open box to be productive

[Patryk Skorupa (skoruppa)]

one more for disable auto hide and global menu only for maximized windows

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Plan is to allow options for these; patches welcome.

[Aleve Sicofante (sicofante)]

Mark: in your post about the HUD you said:

"We’ll resurrect the (boring) old ways of displaying the menu in 12.04, in the app and in the panel."

What did I miss?

[Aleve Sicofante (sicofante)]

@Omer Akram:

What exactly do you mean by "design input"? Just get to the code that hides the menu and add a switch to skip it... The menu was there before, remember? The change has been made to make it vanish. Can't be that hard to restore the original behaviour.

This is a political stance, not a design one.

Once you get "permission from above", there should be little in the way of coding to get this back to its sensible "boring old ways".

[TomasHnyk (sup)]

Aleve: well, I think you just got permission from sabdfl himself, so the only thing we need is for someone to step up and write a patch to allow this option.

I think a dconf option
"hide-global-menu"
with possible values
1) always (default, the current state)
2) hide only menu *
3) never (selfdecriptional)

would be enough.

* i.e. menu would be hidden, close&minimize&maximize buttons would be shown, use case is as follows: I have a maximized application in the background, over it is a not-maximized application that has got focus. I want to close the maximized application. I move the pointer to upper left corner. The buttons do not show, since the background application does not have focus. I have to go back, click on it and then go back to the corner to close it. I do that several times a day :-( . - otherwise, i like autohiding the global menu. I actually thing 2) should be the default, but that is my two cents.

[Danillo (danillo)]

I second the addition of a "hide only menu" option, i.e. that we can get windows buttons for maximized applications back . I got the same problem.

[TomasHnyk (sup)]

By the way, bug 762277 is likely to be a duplicate (or this is a duplicate thereof), bug 732653 is not because it asks for the default behaviour to change (always show global menu), but shows that this bugs lots of people.

[Kenny Woo (hkenneth)]

"I'm not saying that this one issue will make anyone stop using or supporting Ubuntu"

I belong to one of those "anyone" who stopped using Ubuntu and turn on my osx86 just because of this very issue.

[John Lea (johnlea)]

@hkenneth; I hope you come back to Ubuntu when we complete development of LIM and the enhanced menu options in 12.10 (hopefully)

@all; this issue is on our radar, and we should have a good solution ready for 12.10 ;-)

[klap-in (klap-in)]

This bug is about autohide behavior of the global menu. John Lea, you link it now to bug 682788, what is about switching of the global menu at all.

So I think linking it to https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/732653 makes more sense.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

klap-in, I've fixed the mistaken duplicate.

[sickness6666 (sickness-666)]

I'm using EOS Luna with mate-panel. i just want to disable the autohide behaviour of the Appmenu with minimizing applications, etc..
Somebody help me pls!
Thanks

[Xu Bin (xubincs)]

Try the patch from https://launchpadlibrarian.net/157241898/always-show-menubar.patch
I patched unity with that and now I can make appmenu always visible since that patch adds a gsettings entry i.e.,
com.canonical.Unity.Panel, you can set it to be true

¯ □ ¯ ～祝好～

  在2013年12月20 06时56分，"sickness6666"<email address hidden>写道：

*** This bug is a duplicate of bug 682788 ***
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/682788

I'm using EOS Luna with mate-panel. i just want to disable the autohide behaviour of the Appmenu with minimizing applications, etc..
Somebody help me pls!
Thanks

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You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to Unity.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/783240

Title:
  disable autohide AppMenu (global menu)

Status in Ayatana Design:
  New
Status in Unity:
  Incomplete
Status in “unity” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete
Status in Baltix GNU/Linux:
  New

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: unity

  I know the design idea of the autohide.
  http://answerleaks.com/question/ubuntu/22486/why-does-unity-hide-the-
  menubar

  But now i need to use a menu entry in two steps: first move the global menu to show it and next move to the right entry.
  So i wish to show always the global menu (with beneath the title).
  Can you add this option somewhere (at least in gconfediter).

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/783240/+subscriptions

[sickness6666 (sickness-666)]

Thanks Xu Bin..but can you explain where to paste the code?