Re: [Usability] What is the name of this menu?

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 13 Mar 2006, at 09:17, Joachim Noreiko wrote:

> The menu that looks like
> " *foot* Applications Places Desktop"
>
> has no name.
> The applet is called "Menu Bar", which is ambiguous,
> and breaks style guide rules to write "menubar" in one
> word.

The "panel menubar" maybe?  Possibly a bit similar to the "main  
menu", but in what context do you need to refer to the whole thing by  
name anyway?  Wouldn't you normally refer to its individual menus,  
i.e. "Applications menu", "Places menu" or "Desktop menu"?  (Possibly  
prefixed by "panel" for disambiguation, e.g. the "panel Places menu"  
as opposed to the "file manager Places menu"?)

> Considering that this is perhaps the user's main point
> of access to GNOME

I'm not sure if it would be wise to rely on that, as it's distro- 
dependent... JDS still ships without a menubar applet turned on by  
default, for example.
> I've been saying "The top panel menu" which is a bit
> wordy.

I'm not sure that's a good name anyway; what happens if I put it on  
my bottom panel instead? :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems