Re: [Usability] Future of the menu top bar?

[Janne Kaasalainen <janne kaasalainen uiah fi>]

Let's see how many days this will be late. ;)

I prefer top menus on my Windows box (as well) as it is much nicer to  
point up of the screen with Wacoms, not to the bottom. It is a tablet  
thing and as such only affects a small minority of the users, but is  
a pov none the less.

On 12 May 2006, at 17:01, Calum Benson wrote:
> This is precisely why I keep my dock on the left of the screen when  
> I'm
> using OSX... unfortunately, GNOME's panels don't really work very well
> docked to the side of the screen, or I'd probably do the same there.

Doing the same thing with OS X here. And I whole-heartedly agree with  
the notion of Gnome panels as docks.

I find the default of two panels troubling. It takes quite some space  
from the screen and with wide-screen displays even more so. Having  
two of them is especially annoying, but at least on 1600 pixel  
horizontal resolution it is very cumbersome for me  to get rid of the  
bottom one. The top one becomes too crowded for my window management.

Actually, both the Gnome dock problem and the top-bar-only seem to be  
(for me) emerging the same window management problem. That being  
identifying and selecting from multiple applications. This is usually  
done by clicking boxes with the application name. Name (text) is very  
horizontal element and needs enough width for one to understand what  
it reads. This does not fit easily to the side of the screen without  
sacrifices, that is. Also, this also eats space fast from the top and  
bottom bars.

Gnome buttons in general are also quite large. Any chance of them  
getting tightened up a little?


Janne Kaasalainen