Option for persistent menus in AppMenu for focused application

[Kevin Jadin]

- latest Natty x64
- 15" laptop screen

The current behavior of the AppMenu is :
When mouse is *not* over the panel, do not show menu entries.
When mouse is over the panel, show them.

I think this is a usability issue, for some reasons:
- a user can't consider clicking on something that is not visible (or obviously discoverable).
I am thinking of disabled people/older people for whom this behavior might be strange. I can't help but think about them searching for the "File" menu everywhere, a menu that is shown never but when the mouse is on the panel. So that means they always have to put their mouse on the panel in order to be able to read this program's menu entries. Some people often get frustrated when things are not obvious, or because they forget about procedures (here, how to show menus).
- on larger screens, a lot of space is wasted, because of the panel only showing focused program name.
- every program is different, menu entries then vary a lot. That's why we can't always predict what option will be available in which menu entry. We therefore have to evaluate what the program lets us do. Maybe it is due to my laziness, but I like to find options fast and easily, and always having to move my mouse up to the panel can get really annoying, only to show menu entries.

That's why there should be an option to enable / disable the persistent menus of the focused application inside the AppMenu, so that menus are always shown even when mouse is *not* over the panel. This setting could be automatically enabled on larger screen, and disabled on smaller ones.

This topic was discussed on Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1143761

Do not confuse this bug with bug 732653 (about the default visibility) or bug 682788 (about reaching the menu on large screens).

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Hello Kevin, thank you also for this report. I've dup'ed it to MPT's assertion that the menus should be visible constantly. Adding more settings/options is rarely ideal and is generally a good indicator that something is wrong in the first place; it adds more complexity, additional code to maintain and variation on the support side. Finally, most users will not change the defaults and so it never fixes it for them anyway.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

This is not a duplicate, because adding an option (as this bug suggests) would not change the default behavior.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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