Re: All GNOME Shell Developers.

[Reiner Jung <reiner jung uni-oldenburg de>]

Hello Domen,

this top menu thing is not that confusing you are just not used to it.
This is one thing most people have to learn a bit when they switch from
Windows to MacOS.

There are advantages in using a top bar menu. To click a menu item you
normally have to push your mouse (which is less accurate than pulling)
and then you have in Windows to hit an for example 100 pixel wide and 32
pixel deep area to select a menu. On the Macs the depth is infinite, so
it is easier (by a few fractions of a second) to hit the menu option.
But more important for Mac-menus is the position. The menu is always on
top.  It is at the same position. And you get a meta menu point which is
normally squeezed under File (exit) and in Gnome partly under edit
(preferences).

If we would go for that kind of menu style the meta menu (menu point
with the application name) could hold:

- Prefences
- Exit
-------------
+ list of other open apps

Or it could be merged with the gnome-shell activity menu.

But I do not want to push Mac-style menus here. I think we should start
to think less in a program-style-logic. People you different features of
their system at the same time. Today these things are represented by
integrated applications, which doubles a lot of interfaces.
Addressbooks, contact details, search and indexing. So we should rather
work on handling multiple windows of different applications on one
screen (and others on other screens).

Maybe this idea does not work well with the Mac-style menu.

Greetz
  Reiner

p.s. by the way mac style menus do not work very well with
mouse-pointers in sloppy focus.