-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Vishnoo wrote on 07/08/10 19:59: > > On Sat, 2010-08-07 at 14:46 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas >... >> In Ubuntu 9.10 and later, the application icon does not appear in the >> window title bar, partly for the same reason (it's not relevant to >> user goals). > > You seem to be contradicting yourself. ;) > <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=557469#c1> > "A menu item should have an icon only if it represents a dynamic > object such as an application, file, device, or user, or if it makes > the items in that menu segment very much more recognizable" > > If an application icon in a menu makes it more recognizable , > how is it not relevant to the user goals?
I'm not suggesting that there should be an app menu but that it should not use the application icon. What I'm suggesting is that most of the time, when you're using a window, you don't need to see the application brand *at all*. Now, sometimes the application name still needs to be used in the window's title bar, because there is no relevant document name to show instead (for example, Calculator, F-Spot, or Rhythmbox). Here it could go either way: we could be consistent either with other window titles, which don't have an icon, or with menu items representing applications, which do. I think it's better to be consistent with other window titles, because the history of operating systems is a history of things that used to be separate applications slowly being merged into the OS or into other applications, so branding windows would cause churn. (To use another Ubuntu example for a moment, with apologies to those who use other OSes: Once all graphical package management is handled by Ubuntu Software Center and Update Manager, "Software Sources" will no longer need to be presented as a separate application with its own name and icon. It'll be much the same window as it was before, just without a distinct brand.) >... >> If you have a document open in Microsoft Word and a spreadsheet open >> in Microsoft Excel, and you choose "Quit" from Excel's application >> menu on the Mac (or "Exit" from its Office button on Windows), the >> spreadsheet will close. But if you had the same document open in >> OpenOffice.org Writer, and the same spreadsheet open in >> OpenOffice.org Calc, and you chose "Quit" from OpenOffice.org's app >> menu in Gnome Shell, the spreadsheet would close, and -- surprise! >> -- the document would close too. > > You are /not/ completely right here. We do have Close and Exit in > OO.o. We can close one spreadsheet and have the other document open > too. There's no contradiction there. "Close" does the same in both suites, but that's not the problem. The problem is that "Quit" would do different things. > Btw, Why is this an argument against the app-menu? Shouldnt we just > find a way to expose right option here? Because "Quit" is given as the first example of an item justifying the menu's existence at all. > Now again , why isnt the app-menu ideal? because of a few bugs or > improper names in the app-menu? > What is it that makes it completely nonsensical to use such an > app-menu? >... To sum up: Because it increases cognitive load by showing branding at a time when it isn't relevant, and because most of the items proposed for it either should not exist or could sensibly be somewhere else. - -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkxf3rUACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecoDrQCfQOzg8ih2AtoXfQkRnBgvDNsK DwsAnjGL9G3GPOnGVYtvatB+giOJcQrr =wFO9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp