Re: global menubars in GTK+

["Brian J. Tarricone" <bjt23 cornell edu>]

On 05/25/2009 02:04 AM, Nemes Sorin wrote:
> global menu bar from Usability point of view ...
>
> I am a designer interested in Man - Machine interaction.
> Regarding global menu in Gnome, I spent a 2 weeks using globalmenubar
> being curious to find in which mode my workflow will be affected (Speed
> ? Comfort ? ...).
>
> Well after 2 full weeks - I can tell you all - when you have a huge LCD
> / CRT ( you are designer or DTP guy ) global menu is not an option -
> because you have to cross a lot of screen areas with the mouse cursor -
> when is not the right case.

The problem with this sort of analysis is that you're only taking into 
account your single use-case.  What percentage of the target audience 
for this sort of thing has a large monitor and would be affected?  I'd 
say you're in the minority, but without an actual usability study, 
neither you nor I can really comment on that.

For *me*, a global menu would be great.  I have a laptop with a 12" 
screen, 1024x768 resolution.  Having a menu bar on each and every window 
(minus the ones where I can configure the app to hide the bar) wastes so 
much space, and the top of the screen is always within easy reach.

> With widescreens even on a mac globalmenu loose it's sense.

Kinda funny you specifically mention a mac -- do people in the mac 
community complain about having a global menu?  You'd think you would 
see that a lot if it really was a problem, since global menu is the only 
option on macos.

> Now imagine GIMP - you can not assign all
> commands with shortcuts - for any filter (I have ~ 200 filters ) which
> is not assigned to a shortcut, you have to cross all screen again with
> the mouse cursor because of the global menu bar location.

Try right-clicking anywhere on your image ^_~.

	-brian