Re: Apple style menu bar!

[Andrei Yurkevich <urruru ru ru>]

Mike Newman wrote:

> On Mon, 2004-11-01 at 00:01 -0500, Timothy Mann wrote:
> > I wanted to ask about implementing an apple style menu bar( where the
> > menu bar is at the top of the screen and not located on the application
> > window). Is there a way to set gnome to do this? Are there any benefits
> > for having your desktop arranged this way?

> This request used to come up quite regularly. The consensus always
> seemed to be that it was too difficult to implement in GNOME, but
> perhaps recent changes in the way GTK+ manages menus may resolve some of
> the issues.

The problem isn't that it is difficult to implement, but that it will 
bring great inconsistency to your desktop. If GTK+ sometime adds support 
for mac-style menu bar, you will end up with some of your apps having 
menubar in the top of the screen, while others (older gtk/gnome apps and 
all the others, like motif/kde/qt/whatever apps) having the menubar 
wherever they used to have it.

> Aside from 'looking cool' and 'being more like Apple' what do you think
> the benefits to the user could be?

The only benefit that has been proven so far is that you access this 
kind of menus faster - you just move your mouse up and don't have to 
care about stopping it in the right place - it will just stop at the top 
edge of the screen where your menu bar is. In contrast, with the 
traditional menus you have to "seek" the menu with your mouse, moving it 
much slower - thus you access the mac-style menus much faster than the 
traditional menus.

cheers,
Andrei