trouble with the new menu panel

["gavin hurley" <gadge47 hotmail com>]

Is anyone else troubled by the new menu panel deal that makes it's
appearance in Gnome 1.2? It's not all bad; I actually use it on my system.
It sort of reminds me of the Mac menu.

But. What would really be nice is to use that top space for an app that
swallowed the menu of the active app. Then it would really be a lot more
like the Mac. Not that I'm much of a Mac fan but I actually think that's one
thing they did right that /everyone/ else did wrong.

I read that MS decided to place their menus inside the app window because
the distance that the mouse would have to travel to reach them would be
less. Hence, you could get to them faster. But taking Fitt's law into
account the argument actually spins around. Not that this oversight is
surprising when you consider MS seems to have been systematic about it's
non-use of Fitt's law.

Furthermore, with menus stuck inside the app you tend to get crowding
problems like with the Gimp. You have to put all your menu commands in this
tiny little space so you end up with a bunch of submenus that are painful to
use on a regular basis. True, this is partially ameliorated by having
tear-off menus but I still think the better approach is to use the top of
the screen.

These sorts of issues highlight one of the most unfortunate things I see in
Gnome: reverence for customizability at the expense of usability.
Customizability is a nice thing but too often it just amounts to foisting
off difficult decisions on the user and making application designers have to
plan for worst case UI scenarios. Imagine if users had the ability to switch
between top-of-screen menus and top-of-app menus. The designers of the Gimp
(ignore the fact that it's nor really a Gnome app per se) would still have
to use their shrunken menu.

Never mind the fact that given the choice, most users would probably opt for
MS style menus simply because that's what they're familiar with (witness
KDE).

Anyway, this is why I make the appeal that the top of the screen get
"reserved" for a menu swallowing app. If people get used to the 1.2 menu bar
they will be that much more reluctant to even try Mac style menus. The top
edge of the screen is really valuable space. I feel like you could
incorporate what's already in the menu bar with a menu swallowing app and
make everyone happier.

-gsh