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

[Frederic Crozat <fcrozat mandriva com>]

Le dimanche 14 mai 2006 à 21:59 +0200, Reinout van Schouwen a écrit :
> On Thu, 11 May 2006 16:33:22 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
> 
> > [2] I don't know for sure what other distributions accept the default
> > layout.  Please do tell if your preferred distribution accepts the default
> > panel layout.
> 
> Since you asked :)
> 
> Mandriva uses a two-panel layout, with the application menu, a couple of
> launchers and applets at the top, and the taskbar + pager on the bottom.
> 
> http://www.tuxmachines.org/gallery/albums/2006-04/gnome.jpg
> 
> I'm not sure this is the default layout but I guess it is. 

It is :)

Let's do a little history digging about top / bottom menu panels in
Mandriva (for those interested), which might enlight folks here :
-initially, Mandrake Linux shipped with default GNOME layout, ie bottom
bar with foot until GNOME 1.4, then Ximian GNOME came just after GNOME
1.4 was released and we tried the top menu bar (people liked it at that
time, with nice rounded corners). Moreover, since GNOME was not the
default environment shipped with our distro, I was more free to try
this. KDE on the other hand was using a bottom menu bar, mainly to look
like Windows.
-then, for Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Bamboo), in mid-2003, as long with our
common theming of GNOME and KDE, we tried to unify a little GNOME and
KDE panel and switched GNOME to a bottom panel (see
http://web.archive.org/web/20030729222330/images.mandrakesoft.com/img/9.1/s3.png ).
-but then, the nautilus guys released spatial nautilus and we thought :
why try to unify too much both desktop environment, since each one has
its own philosophy and design. So, for Mandrake 9.2 (or 10.0, I'm not
100% sure), we decided to revert GNOME layout to the default GNOME
layout (top and bottom panels) and since then, we are sticking to this
choice.

Of course, since GNOME is (still) not our default desktop environment,
we are more free to change GNOME layout than other distributions.

Moreover, since Novell is targeting previous Windows users (it is quite
clear in the betterdesktop videos), it is understandable they put the
panel in the bottom of the screen, so users from Windows are not too
much confused. As for Fedora / RH, I think it is to keep what they have
always done, ie a bottom panel. And I can't speak about Ubuntu guys ;)

-- 
Frederic Crozat <fcrozat mandriva com>
Mandriva