WIshlist: Replace menu bar with drop-down menu from window title

[Tony Houghton]

Saving space by getting rid of per-application menu bars is a good idea, but I think the global menu bar is the wrong solution. It has the disadvantage of requiring extra mouse movement, and makes sloppy or follow focus modes virtually unusable.

I think menu bars were not a good idea from day one. Many GUI designers now seem to be thinking the same way eg Microsoft's ribbon, and the major browsers (but not Firefox on Linux for some reason) now have menu buttons instead of menu bars. There was also an OS (Acorn's RISC OS) where there was no such thing as menu bars; all applications used pop-up menus which were opened by middle-clicking anywhere in a window.

I would like the appmenu service(s) to be changed so that for non-maximized windows they replace menu bars with a drop-down menu from a button in window title bars instead of a global menu bar. For maximized windows maybe the existing solution should be kept.

I guess it would require a new compiz plugin too, or an extension to the existing Unity one, and I don't think I have the time or expertise/specialist knowledge to write all this myself. Would anyone who already knows how to write compiz plugins be interested in developing this idea?

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: appmenu-gtk 12.10.2-0ubuntu1.3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-23.35-generic 3.5.7.2
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-23-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu10
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Feb 19 13:20:02 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-02-18 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64 (20121017.5)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: appmenu-gtk
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 931245, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.