Comment 15 for bug 682788

Julien, I appreciate your sentiment;

But that is not a generally accepted view in HCI, and does not agree with
the basic biomechanics of the human body. Shortest distance does not
normally lead to the easiest way for the user to access some GUI element.
 Especially on a small screen, the easiest to hit is the location of the
cursor (e.g. right click menu); and a close second would be one of the
corner pixels of the display, and then the edges. Narrow menus under title
bars are actually some of the most difficult scenarios to deal with, and
really should never have been adopted for small to medium resolution
screens; which only carried over in places like windows or Gnome2 for
historical reasons and familiarity.

It is generally better to use some type of menu at the screen corner/edge if
the application window is sized to larger than a certain fraction of the
linear screen resolution in the relevant dimensions (depending on corner or
edge). The exact value is debatable, but the range is pretty well under
consensus by a lot of people. This means that with exception to very few
applications with excessively small windows (IM client, e.g.), the vast
majority of applications on a medium resolution screen will benefit far more
from global menus than from small, hard to hit menus under each title bar.
 This is without even mentioning the space savings and other benefits.

For very high res screens, I do agree with you, there are scenarios where
per window rendered menu system can be better. In those situations, it
would make sense, for example, on a 2560x1600 screen to have several
application windows occupy relatively small portions of the visible screen.
 But for these small corner cases, exceptions can be made at some
configuration during installation or user account setup. In all other
cases, it makes zero sense, and are prefered sometimes by certain users
simply because of the inertia of their computing habits. And we certainly
shouldn't try to force what you are suggesting on every user who have a
small to medium res screen.

On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 2:31 AM, Julien Olivier <email address hidden> wrote:

> @Chen, having the application menu inside the application itself is
> always the best position for it because it's obviously the shortest
> distance from the application window, by definition... So, yes, having
> the menu rendered once per window on a smaller screen IS very good for
> the user. And, is you tend to have maximized windows, as I said, it's
> better to use the global menu. So, my solution would fit all the use
> cases perfectly.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to unity.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/682788
>
> Title:
> Global menu is not ergonomical on large screens
>
> Status in Ayatana Design:
> New
> Status in Unity:
> Opinion
>
> Bug description:
> Global menu in general (not only in Unity) is very unergonomic on
> large screens (see the attached screenshot) because if you have a
> small window somewhere near the low right corner you have to move the
> cursor all the way up to to panel to reach the menu. I understand why
> the global menu was used for the netbook edition (it saves space and
> most windows are maximized), but since Unity is intended to be for the
> desktop edition there should be an option to switch to the traditional
> position of the app menu. It would be welcomed by many desktop users.
>