Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity

[tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org (Tom Metro)]

Jarod Wilson wrote:
> Another pro to consider: menus aren't duplicated needlessly
> across multiple instances of the same program.

Visual duplication or resource duplication?


> Part of this has to do with how processes are launch... Two gnome
> terminal windows == two different applications, each with its own
> menu[*]. Two Terminal terminal windows on OS X is two windows of the
> same application.

Although that may be imposed on OS X, on GNOME that's strictly up to the
developer.

Firefox: one instance (normally)
Chrome: multiple instances

The terminal emulator I use, ROXTerm, supports either mode. Depending on
the command line switches you use, you can have one instance with
multiple windows, or start a new instance. (You can also have multiple
tabs within a window.)

So I don't think this implementation detail has much to do with the menu
locations.


> One menu bar instead of two. Now add a bunch more terminal windows
> and consider which one makes better use of screen real estate.

Practically speaking, I don't really follow your usage scenario. Do you
vertically stack terminal emulators? If so, then yes, extra menus add
up. If not, then it seems irrelevant. (In a wide-screen world, vertical
stacking is rare.)


> I'm not sure that even being able to turn off the menu bar is an
> option in many applications, at least, not without significant
> hackage.

ROXTerm happens to let you turn it off, but I agree, it isn't a
universal option.


> ...I rarely ever have to go to the menu bar on any OS.

Good point. For frequently used applications, I agree.

But the whole point of menus are to provide a documentation crutch for
infrequent operations or infrequent users. For the latter case, if you
make the menus less convenient to use, then you impede the learning that
leads to using the menus less.


> [*] I actually have recollections of at least early versions of
> gnome-shell experimenting with someone grouping these such that
> they looked like just one application, but I haven't looked to
> see if that made it all the way to gnome 3.

DockbarX does application grouping, independent of instance (i.e. it
correctly groups FF windows together, as well as Chrome windows).

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
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