Re: GNOME Goal Proposal: Port to GMenu

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 5:24 PM, Evandro Giovanini <efgiovanini gmail com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 12:51 PM, Xan Lopez <xan gnome org> wrote:
>> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Andrew Cowie
>> <andrew operationaldynamics com> wrote:
>>> Is there a reference application doing this right?
>>>
>>> I ask this because Epiphany¹ has no menu, but does and a funky button
>>> over on the right that, upon investigation, turns out to be a menu has
>>> useful things like "add bookmark" ... but not preferences! Which,
>>> eventually and quite by accident, I discovered was in the global GMenu
>>> thing up top. Oh.
>>
>> The way it was designed is that things related to the application as a
>> whole go in the application menu, things related to the particular
>> window you are in go in the gear thing. I'm not sure about what you
>> mean exactly with "Epiphany has no menu" in any case.
>>
>>>
>>> Presumably that's not quite what you're aiming for. Perhaps you can
>>> suggest a current GNOME app that *is* doing precisely what it is you
>>> want us all to do?
>>
>> The design we have is not exactly like what it's implemented, since
>> there's a few things in the gear menu that should not be there. The
>> fact that there's a global app menu and a window specific menu is
>> implemented as designed, though.
>>
>>
>
> I think having two different "super" menus could be confusing, the
> distinction between application and window is not something people
> think about.
>
> An example of how this can be a problem is the "View as List/Grid"
> menu items in Documents. These exact same options exist in Nautilus,
> but they would live in the menubar or a super menu instead of the
> appmenu. Per-window/per-app makes sense from a technical perspective
> but it's not a natural to users.

The menu that is currently in the Web toolbar contains a fairly broad
array of items, as reflected by the cog (or gear) icon that labels it
- it basically means 'do something'.

If I understand them correctly, the mockups [1] call for something
different - a share menu. This would have a much more focused role and
its scope would be clearer. It would also only be shown when
displaying web pages rather than the 'pages' view - ie. it is
contextual and displayed on-demand (as opposed to the cog menu that is
always shown).

This distinction between app menus that are global and always
available and focused options that are displayed on-demand when
context requires it is a key one for the design of the new
applications.

So in this case, I don't think the distinction between the app menu
and any other menus is ambiguous (as designed, at least).

Allan

[1] https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Web/#Tentative_Design
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