GUI principles: Main Menubar (OS X) VS Window Menubars(LInux, MS)

[finny388]

This is not an Apple vs MS vs Canonical discussion at all.

Strictly your GUI preference.

Please vote and offer your reasons.

I much prefer each window owning its own menubar (if it wants/needs one). here are the pros and cons I can think of with my biases included:

Main Menubar
Pros

• It is always in the same place (whatever)
• If very little, it uses less screen space (whatever)

Cons

• The active window may not be raised so the main menubar is not always corresponding to what windows are on the screen

Window Menubars
Pros

• A window doesn't have to be in focus for a menu item to be clicked
• A window isn't forced to have a standard menu

Cons

• Takes up more space? (whatever)

[doorknob60]

Crap I clicked the wrong one *facepalm* Meant to click each Window has its own like Win and Lin, but I clicked the Mac one in the poll. I'm just more used to it that way, and there's nothing wrong with it.

[Islington]

on a small screen, uni menubar.

[NCLI]

For netbooks and other small-screen devices: Unibar.
For unmaximised windows on big screens: Winbar
For maximised windows on big screens: Unibar

[finny388]

For netbooks and other small-screen devices: Unibar.
For unmaximised windows on big screens: Winbar
For maximised windows on big screens: Unibar

Hard to argue with that. But in the case of maxxed windows on big screens, I don't see much of a difference.

[3rdalbum]

Nobody mention Fitt or his Law.

[murderslastcrow]

I actually noticed Kubuntu comes with a main menubar that you can place anywhere. I thought it was pretty nifty, and after opening a few applications it was quite nice to see things even, rather than a bunch of words on the upper left of the window. You see, I hate words- I hardly ever need them on windows. It's like putting the word 'car' and something that's obviously a car. After you know what it is, you really don't need the label.

Of course, I love the self-glorification of programs sometimes, too. It's not always a bad thing to stand out, even in a unified GUI. But, in the end, I switched back to the window menubars. I think it was just to remind me that those options exist, as I won't always take a glance to wherever I've put that menu. Also, I'm not sure if Gnome applications adopt the KDE menubar settings, so it might not work with everything. Then again, this is a fairly broad assumption- I haven't tried it.

To be honest, at least in KDE 4, the GUI looks so nice that having that menu there doesn't really incite discomfort. I don't see either way as superior, except that in KDE 4, taking that menu out doesn't seem to shorten the windows all that much compared to how much room the menu might take.

I think on a netbook, with Unity, it's an excellent idea, as it optimizes screen real estate.

I think that on a Mac, where by default the dock gets in the way with its huge buttons and the window decorations are a bit too self-involved, it's not saving you any space. It's only there for the sake of consistency, but it's the same idea with the window approach- you can just view several at a time, which may be considered as clutter.

So really, there are varied reasons why either approach would be beneficial in a variety of situations. I'm grateful you brought this up as a GUI choice, not a Windows vs. OS X discussion. Too often it devolves into that kind of garbage.

[spupy]

I actually noticed Kubuntu comes with a main menubar that you can place anywhere. I thought it was pretty nifty, and after opening a few applications it was quite nice to see things even, rather than a bunch of words on the upper left of the window.

You mean Kubuntu has unified menu-bar? In KDE 4? I don't have such thing here on Arch with KDE 4.5. Is it some plasmoid? Please tell me.

[formaldehyde_spoon]

Mac style. You can't beat having a target with infinite height.

[Bachstelze]

Don't care. Both are fine to me. Netbooks are so 2008.