Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-04-05 Thread Frederik Nnaji
On Fri, 2011-03-18 at 23:38 -0300, Conscious User wrote: I should mention, though, that in my opinion the fact that Unity merges the titlebar with the panel makes the dragging slightly more intuitive: you drag the titlebar to the thing it's going to be merged to. Perhaps *too* slightly to

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-28 Thread David Stevenson
On 28/03/11 11:44, Vishnoo wrote: We really need to collect mass user data as to how people are using their application windows, at what sizes they use the app and how often they are resizing. While I absolutely agree on collecting user data, I am concerned with the idea that we then try to

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-28 Thread Spike Burch
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 6:25 AM, David Stevenson da...@avoncliff.com wrote: FOSS is about choice, not conforming to predefined norms. Users are more than welcome to choose to use something else, you know. ___ Mailing list:

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-28 Thread zekopeko
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 1:25 PM, David Stevenson da...@avoncliff.com wrote: On 28/03/11 11:44, Vishnoo wrote: We really need to collect mass user data as to how people are using their application windows, at what sizes they use the app and how often they are resizing. While I absolutely

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-28 Thread Lance
On Monday, March 28, 2011 5:44 AM Vishnoo wrote: However, for app like Web-browsers, main window of email clients,inkscape,..., they should probably open at maximum screen size. Eventhis depends on the hardware. If someone has a 24 monitor, they mightnot need the window at that size. While for

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-28 Thread Vishnoo
On Mon, 2011-03-28 at 06:27 -0700, Lance wrote: A couple of problems come to mind with fixed window sizes. In all cases one must consider that I have very poor visual acuity. Hmm? I did not mention that the windows need to be a fixed size only or to remove any feature. :-) What I was replying

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-28 Thread Scott Kitterman
On Monday, March 28, 2011 09:18:35 am zekopeko wrote: On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 1:25 PM, David Stevenson da...@avoncliff.com wrote: On 28/03/11 11:44, Vishnoo wrote: We really need to collect mass user data as to how people are using their application windows, at what sizes they use the app

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-28 Thread Matthew Paul Thomas
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Spike Burch wrote on 28/03/11 12:38: ... Users are more than welcome to choose to use something else, you know. ... Yeah, but if you keep saying that often enough, they will. - -- mpt -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-23 Thread Grant Willey
One possible option is to split the desktop into 9 sections (rule of thirds) and use combinations of those sections as the only size options available. This would allow easy modulation of existing windows and would be largely backward-compatible with existing software. Browser windows usually

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-18 Thread Mitja Pagon
Menu hiding is one of the risky moves we are making. Initial tests on unsuspecting users have shown they find 'em quickly and easily enough. I agree with you, though, that a hint to their existence and anchor (left-of-the-File-menu) would be nice. That can come in a refinement, mockups and

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-18 Thread Valentin
Hello guys! If there is no menu item in the hidden menu bar, on mouse over there should be no action (the title of the application should not be shorten). ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-18 Thread Mario Vukelic
On Fr, 2011-03-18 at 19:15 +0100, Mitja Pagon wrote: I agree with you, though, that a hint to their existence and anchor (left-of-the-File-menu) would be nice. That can come in a refinement, mockups and patches welcome. Please forgive me if I provide no link, but there's either a bug report

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-18 Thread Conscious User
Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: ... (I pretty much agree with the paragraphs before, so I'm simply omitting them...) I think the Gnome Shell designers are badly underestimating the use cases for minimize. Maybe... but the problem is, so is Unity, at least currently. It didn't remove

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-18 Thread Vishnoo
On Fri, 2011-03-18 at 16:24 +, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: I think the Gnome Shell designers are badly underestimating the use cases for minimize. No, they havent. I take it you havent read Owen's Mail on the Shell ML.. :-) They know what use-cases they havent fixed (or dont have a better

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-18 Thread Ian Santopietro
Why in the world does the *user* need to constantly maximize/restore? Apps need to open the windows with the right size. And any app which requires the user to constantly resize is broken. Maximize does have a lot of very nice use cases, as it can help a user focus on the task they're trying to

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Matthew Paul Thomas
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Luke Benstead wrote on 15/03/11 21:53: ... Erm, I hate to point out the obvious, but why don't we just put the menu back in the windows and abandon appmenu as a failed experiment? Keep the title and window controls in the panel for maximized

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Matthew Paul Thomas
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Scott Kitterman wrote on 16/03/11 12:42: ... A bug is a bug no matter who files it. If we're down to it's only a real bug if certain people file the bug, then that's a real problem. ... I totally agree. I don't think my bug reports should get

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Conscious User
Ian Santopietro wrote: What about flashing the menu with the title for the first, say, five seconds that the window is open. That gives an indication as to where the menu is, reduces visual clutter, and allows the user to get a quick preview of what menu headers are available (File, Edit,

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Remco
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 17:14, Conscious User consciousu...@aol.com wrote: My personal suggestion would be dropping the title in the panel as mpt suggested, but keeping the idea of merging the titlebar and the panel. This means dropping the title entirely in the maximized case, yes. I don't

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Xavier Guillot
Hello, My 2 cents also about global menu, as just a normal and daily user (both personal and professional use of Ubuntu), not a developer nor a designer. I like it very much as it is right now, because : - It allows space saving and is very nice - For me it is not a problem that window

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Paul Sladen
On Thu, 17 Mar 2011, Xavier Guillot wrote: - For me it is not a problem that window title hides the menu at first I bet there's a possible solution somewhere with blurring/transparaceny. The model used with the notification pop-ups is that they are transparent to click-events and blur/fade

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Ian Santopietro
For fixing the gap, I'm going to suggest something controversial, but that I wanted to suggest for a long time anyway: dropping the minimize and maximize buttons, following Gnome3's direction and under their same arguments. I can see getting rid of the maximize button, as Gnome has a point

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Conscious User
I don't feel their argument for getting rid of the Minimize button applies to Unity. It works great for Gnome, but we still have somewhere to minimize windows to in Unity, thus the Minimize button has a point. Several problems here: 1) The somewhere to minimize to was only *one* of the

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Ian Santopietro
This is largely irrelevant since I'm still defending killing minimization but... what? From where this remarkable certitude on such a subjective matter, that does not even require any kind of justification, came from? :) No Problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_(visual_arts)

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Greg K Nicholson
On this subject I'd like to reiterate and support a suggestion previously made on this list: https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg04555.html ☮♥☯ Greg K Nicholson http://gkn.me.uk ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to :

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Conscious User
No Problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_(visual_arts) Basically, in visual composition, when there are multiple objects involved, it becomes pleasing to have one item surrounded by an even number of objects (Thus an odd number). Five, IMO, brings clutter, particularly to

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-17 Thread Spike Burch
+1 On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 6:30 PM, Greg K Nicholson g...@gkn.me.uk wrote: On this subject I'd like to reiterate and support a suggestion previously made on this list: https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg04555.html ☮♥☯ Greg K Nicholson http://gkn.me.uk

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Didier Roche
Le mardi 15 mars 2011 à 16:37 -0700, Dylan McCall a écrit : After several weeks of trying, last week I finally succeeded in installing Natty to test Unity. I was disappointed to see that in Unity, menus are invisible until you mouse over where they are supposed to be. For a window, until

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Mitja Pagon
And what may those advantages be? Not every application is a web browser and not all applications are the same, so this "trend" Chrome supposedly started does not automatically apply to all and every application. Also this quest for abolishing menus is complete nonsense propagated by people

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Marc Lajoie
@lists.launchpad.net Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 3:20:51 AM Subject: Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity I, for one, love the integration of the menu and titlebars into the panel in Natty. The decluttering of the workspace, or the chromifization (as in Google Chrome

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Mitja Pagon
: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 10:23:48 AM Subject: Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity You can drop the ad hominem attacks. The everyone's-stupid-but-me attitude is not very productive. Advantages to current setup: Increases free vertical space; removes visual clutter

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Vishnoo
On Tue, 2011-03-15 at 21:17 -0300, Conscious User wrote: Remco wrote: The thing I find jarring is that we have this mysterious design team that basically discusses things behind our backs here at Ayatana. I understand that a small team with face-to-face meetings can be beneficial to

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Paul Sladen
On Wed, 16 Mar 2011, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: Do you know of any Ubuntu application that was trying to use its menu titles as an indicator in the first place? The Gimp and various other MDI applications prepend an asterisk ('*') to the front of the window title to show an edited, but unsaved

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Marc Lajoie
Not off the top of my head (which is not an admission that such applications don't exist, I just don't have time to hunt through my app catalogue right now). But one of the solutions proposed for the hidden menu problem, that of not showing the title at all for maximized windows, would probably

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Conscious User
Is it a coincidence that the two of them worked in Open source projects _before_ joining Canonical design team..? ;-) This topic has been hashed, re-hashed over-n-over again several times.. I, for one, definitely see a huge improvement in communication from the design team. Several

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Saleel Velankar
On Wednesday, March 16, 2011 11:00:35 AM Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: (It would be interesting to replace maximization with a standard function that really *does* make all the available screen space ... dedicated to this window.) This is one of the most hated features in osx, imo. It takes

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Vishnoo
On Wed, 2011-03-16 at 08:37 -0300, Conscious User wrote: You completely missed my point. Yes, I'm talking about the lack of communication between the design team and the community, yup, I replied to only that part of your mail.. and referred only to that part as being re-hashed.. :-) but

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Matthew Paul Thomas
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Paul Sladen wrote on 16/03/11 11:29: On Wed, 16 Mar 2011, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: Do you know of any Ubuntu application that was trying to use its menu titles as an indicator in the first place? The Gimp and various other MDI applications

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Scott Kitterman
On Wednesday, March 16, 2011 08:35:32 am Vishnoo wrote: On Wed, 2011-03-16 at 08:37 -0300, Conscious User wrote: You completely missed my point. Yes, I'm talking about the lack of communication between the design team and the community, yup, I replied to only that part of your mail.. and

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Scott Kitterman
On Wednesday, March 16, 2011 09:42:17 am Vishnoo wrote: On Wed, 2011-03-16 at 08:42 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote: Else, we are in a huge mess, if they are lacking communication too.. :s A bug is a bug no matter who files it. If we're down to it's only a real bug if certain people file

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Bazon
On 16.03.2011 10:23, Marc Lajoie wrote: Advantages to current setup: Increases free vertical space; removes visual clutter; creates a disincentive to use the menu as an indicator conveying useful information for which it's not suited (more standardized and consistent menu headings across

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Bazon
On 16.03.2011 18:08, David wrote: Hi, i just want to add my 2cts (but its to late for natty so you need to continue anyway ;-)) i think we should really let the user choose and just discussing about the best default. See settings.png Yes, I totally agree on that!

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-16 Thread Saleel Velankar
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 6:58 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas m...@canonical.comwrote: Do you know of any Ubuntu application that was trying to use its menu titles as an indicator in the first place? - -- mpt Firefox, private browsing mode. the tilebar is how private mode status is conveyed to

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Conscious User
I have a simple proposal to fix these problems: The application title should be removed from Unity's menu bar. I'm reliably informed that this would be extremely low risk, in that it would involve changing two lines of code. But how would be the design for maximized windows? I'm guessing the

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Spike Burch
I can verify that hiding the menus by default is problematic in my (limited) user testing. On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Matthew Paul Thomas m...@canonical.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 After several weeks of trying, last week I finally succeeded in installing

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Thorsten Wilms
On 03/15/2011 06:34 PM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: I was disappointed to see that in Unity, menus are invisible until you mouse over where they are supposed to be. For a window, until you mouse over it, the space reserved for its menus is taken up by an application or window title. And for the

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Chris Coulson
On Tue, 2011-03-15 at 17:34 +, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 After several weeks of trying, last week I finally succeeded in installing Natty to test Unity. I was disappointed to see that in Unity, menus are invisible until you mouse over

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Conscious User
Thorsten Wilms wrote: The alternative would be to show both title and menu, but giving the menu priority. For habituation and quick aiming, it's important that the menu always starts in the same spot from the left (assuming LTR reading direction). To guarantee that, without using an offset

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Carl Simpson
The change that you propose might make it harder to see which application a particular menu belongs to. I think it's that (and the desire to hide a bit of messy interface) that led to the current situation, although I've no citation on it. I think in having it always-menu, care would need to be

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Saleel Velankar
On Tuesday, March 15, 2011 5:34:52 PM Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: I have a simple proposal to fix these problems: The application title should be removed from Unity's menu bar. Possibly. The titlebar is used to differentiate between two windows of the same app, or less used to differentiate

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Vishnoo
On Tue, 2011-03-15 at 15:51 -0300, Conscious User wrote: Thorsten Wilms wrote: The alternative would be to show both title and menu, but giving the menu priority. For habituation and quick aiming, it's important that the menu always starts in the same spot from the left (assuming LTR

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Luke Benstead
On 15 March 2011 20:13, Vishnoo v...@ubuntu.com wrote: On Tue, 2011-03-15 at 15:51 -0300, Conscious User wrote: Thorsten Wilms wrote: The alternative would be to show both title and menu, but giving the menu priority. For habituation and quick aiming, it's important that the menu always

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Mitja Pagon
to application developers to sort out. Cheers, Mitja - Original Message - From: Matthew Paul Thomas m...@canonical.com To: Ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 6:34:52 PM Subject: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity -BEGIN PGP SIGNED

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Remco
On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 23:29, Mitja Pagon mitja.pa...@inueni.com wrote: I've raised this issue before in various places, but I never got any response, so I'm really, positively surprised to see the same issues raised by someone from Canonical. I also raised this issue in a bug report[1], and

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Dylan McCall
After several weeks of trying, last week I finally succeeded in installing Natty to test Unity. I was disappointed to see that in Unity, menus are invisible until you mouse over where they are supposed to be. For a window, until you mouse over it, the space reserved for its menus is taken up

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Conscious User
Remco wrote: The thing I find jarring is that we have this mysterious design team that basically discusses things behind our backs here at Ayatana. I understand that a small team with face-to-face meetings can be beneficial to design, but a problem lies in communication and collaboration

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread appi2...@gmail.com
On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Matthew Paul Thomas m...@canonical.comwrote: I see four major problems with hiding the menus and covering them with an application or window title. 1. Most importantly, it makes the menus much harder to use. 2. It makes some functions effectively

Re: [Ayatana] Design problem: Menus hidden by default in Unity

2011-03-15 Thread Marc Lajoie
I, for one, love the integration of the menu and titlebars into the panel in Natty. The decluttering of the workspace, or the chromifization (as in Google Chrome, which started the wonderful trend of minimal interfaces and the hiding of visual clutter) of Ubuntu is the main reason I am looking