Global Menu Lacks Customizability

[Nate Wiebe]

To make Unity more accessible, there should be more options for the global menu. Such as disabling it, or only enabling it for fully maximized windows.

Here are two user stories with three scenarios:

Pete mostly uses his netbook and really likes the way the global menu is integrated and saves him the much needed vertical space, but when he is working at his desktop, he finds himself constantly moving his mouse to the top of his screen to access the application's menu. Pete wishes there was a setting that would allow him to turn off the global menu for non-maximized applications that would still integrate the menu for applications that are fully maximized.

John on the other hand, is a traditionalist. He most commonly works with multiple terminals and finds that the global menu just gets in his way. He also dislikes how the menu becomes hidden by default. Currently, the first thing he does after a fresh install, is remove the 'indicator-appmenu' package in order to completely remove the global menu from his install. John wishes there was a way to simply disable the global menu without having to remove a system package that could potentially cause a dependency issue later down the road.

[Newfie (mn-newfie)]

Agree with this 100%.

I prefer the global menu but I really wish I had more options. A simple GUI with the ability to enable/disable features (such as the hiding) would make it a much better experience for me.

The idea of "hide it unless you need it" bothers me. I'd keep the global menu bar visible with non-maximized windows, but hidden when maximized. I don't need the application's title visible in two places (the window and the panel) when it is not maximized. It's simply redundant.

[Sagar Chalise (chalisesagar)]

I second this, especially the first user story. I like global menu in maximized mode only. I kinda had this wish asked on askubuntu as well.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/37090/using-indicator-appmenu-in-maximized-mode-only

[Florian Diesch (diesch)]

I'm using focus-follows-mouse which makes the global menu unusable if there's more than one visible window on the desktop.

[Alex Lewis (alexlewis-deactivatedaccount)]

I don't think I've quite made my mind up Global Menus yet. I think at least having a config item to have Global on maximised windows but local for windowed applications would make for a welcome customisation. Once I've decided what I prefer I'd like to be able to at least configure that behaviour appropriately.

I not sure whether this is the place to do it or what the process is but is there any way of adding a Use Case, specifically the behaviour of the Global Menu on multi-monitor screens? Obviously others may not agree with me so I thought I'd add it here and see what people say.

So in my opinion a Use Case would be...

Use Case:
  Whilst in work John docks his company laptop and uses both a large widescreen monitor as well as the laptop's screen. John finds that when he uses a terminal on the laptop screen the Global Menu appears at the top of the laptop screen, as he expected. When he moves his mouse back to the desktop screen and up to the Global Menu nothing appears. His instinct tells him that he expected to see the Global Menu of the "focused" application on the desktop screen. He finds having to click on an application on the desktop screen to bring it back into focus and then go back to the Global Menu on the desktop screen frustrating.

In short John would like to see application focus being done per screen when the desktop stretches across screens.

[Alex Lewis (alexlewis-deactivatedaccount)]

Oh and another thought... sorry this will be my last one :)

Use Case:
  As John is a Software Developer he finds he uses multiple terminals frequently. He also frequently arranges them so they do not overlap. When accessing the global menu it is not always immediately/instinctively apparent as to which terminal is in focus and consequently which window the Global Menu is for.

Possibly in this case either the focused window highlights do not quite highlight the focused window enough or whether an extra highlight could appear on the focused window when accessing the global menu. This is specific case where the local menu on a windowed application is possibly more intuitive than the global menu.

[LostOverThere (lostoverthere)]

I agree entirely. The global menu is a very solid concept, but as the examples above show, it isn't ideal for everyone. Allowing uses to do basic configurations as the original post suggests would be fantastic.

I, personally, would love to keep the global menu on my system, but stop it from auto-hiding. For me, that would be ideal.

[Gerhard Aigner (gerhard-aigner)]

I heavily support user story #1 (=Having Global Menu on maximized Windows only).

[jimjimovich (jimjimovich)]

Being able to tweak the global menu is also a must in our LTSP systems at our university. Being able to disable it except for full-screen applications would be very useful to our users and ease the transition from 10.04 to 12.04.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Major Grubert (majorgrubert)]

And Debra :
 Debra want both a global menu (for the space) and persistant showed menu in the top panel and the application name. So she wishes an option to show something like that :
(app icon) App Name : Global menu

[Kim Allamandola (spacexplorer)]

IMVHO Global Menu is needed mainly to invite people to forget menu as a GUI
element because on touch-only systems menu are awkward and the benefit of
save vertical space is only a side effect, the same for the drawback of more
mouse move on traditional systems... So Global Menu have to stay here not
only for maximized windows, and have to be hidden like now.

However I would like to have an UBUNTU_MENUPROXY per application: GiMP is
almost unusable with global menu, gVim or Firefox or Nautilus are ok, Libre
Office so-so, etc... Other problem is sloppy focus as stated by Florian
Diesch.

Mybe Unity really need a CCSM-like settings app with many options!
A possible solution for this problem can be a panel/notebook like:

 +-----------------------------+
 | Global Menu settings |
 +-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
 | Enter applications you want with the global menù DISABLED: |
 | |
 | [ ComboBoxEntry for new app, enter to add ] [addButton] |
 | |
 | TreeView/QTableWidget with selected applications, |
 | right-click->remove or select+canc to remove |
 +------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Sorry for my bed English :-)

[Kim Allamandola (spacexplorer)]

Snort,
http://paste2.org/p/1811116
to see a less obscene text draw...

[Danillo (danillo)]

This bug is very closely related to bug #682788, which already has a long discussion of this subject full of suggestions and mock-ups. It would be nice to vote and discuss there too.

[dstaubsauger (dickerstaubsauger)]

@danillo #13 this is actually a duplicate and i think most people there agreed on the suggested solution.