Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity

[jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org (Jarod Wilson)]

On May 10, 2011, at 8:57 PM, Tom Metro wrote:

> Jarod Wilson wrote:
>> Another pro to consider: menus aren't duplicated needlessly
>> across multiple instances of the same program.
> 
> Visual duplication or resource duplication?

Visual duplication, which is also a resource duplication (where
said resource is on-screen real estate).


>> Part of this has to do with how processes are launch... Two gnome
>> terminal windows == two different applications, each with its own
>> menu[*]. Two Terminal terminal windows on OS X is two windows of the
>> same application.
> 
> Although that may be imposed on OS X, on GNOME that's strictly up to the
> developer.

Well, not strictly, if you're using $something (like DockbarX) that
ends up grouping them together anyway.


> Firefox: one instance (normally)
> Chrome: multiple instances
> 
> The terminal emulator I use, ROXTerm, supports either mode. Depending on
> the command line switches you use, you can have one instance with
> multiple windows, or start a new instance. (You can also have multiple
> tabs within a window.)
> 
> So I don't think this implementation detail has much to do with the menu
> locations.

I'm mostly thinking "default gnome desktop config, out of the box" here,
you can obviously tweak the heck out of your desktop config, use
non-default terminal emulators, non-default config options, etc.


>> One menu bar instead of two. Now add a bunch more terminal windows
>> and consider which one makes better use of screen real estate.
> 
> Practically speaking, I don't really follow your usage scenario. Do you
> vertically stack terminal emulators? If so, then yes, extra menus add
> up. If not, then it seems irrelevant. (In a wide-screen world, vertical
> stacking is rare.)

I run with 3 monitors. Primary monitor has two full-height terminal
windows side-by-side, and at least one of the other monitors has a
terminal window on it, sometimes both do. So three or four terminal
windows, each with multiple tabs in them. In none of them do I really
have any need for the menu bar. Default gnome-terminal settings, I'd
have three or four useless menu bars, taking up screen real estate
that is better utilized for another line or two of terminal text.

Just wandering around my office though, I can see plenty of people
with multiple terminal windows stacked both horizontally and
vertically in a grid, sometimes with as many as ten terminal windows,
most of them with menus still showing in all of those windows.

...
>> ...I rarely ever have to go to the menu bar on any OS.
> 
> Good point. For frequently used applications, I agree.
> 
> But the whole point of menus are to provide a documentation crutch for
> infrequent operations or infrequent users. For the latter case, if you
> make the menus less convenient to use, then you impede the learning that
> leads to using the menus less.

Meh. Top of the screen isn't all that inconvenient to me. Its always
in the exact same place, so finding it with a simple muscle memory
trained flick of the mouse/touchpad/whatever is rather quick. In some
ways, that's superior to having to pay attention to what you're doing
as you track the cursor on screen to an in-window menu. Sure, if you
have a ton of pixels and are using an application two screens away,
it could be a lot more movement required than an in-window menu,
there *are* tradeoffs, but its hardly "less convenient" to me.


-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org