Unity Global Menu Question

[nogoodnamesleft]

First I like the global menu.

However, I do not like the way it auto-hides the application's menu until you hover over it. This is slowing me down as I need to hover first to see where to move the mouse to ... I can't find a way to configure this setting.

Just to make it clear what I am trying to do:

Unity has a global menu at the top of the screen, which when you hover over it, displays the menu bar for the current application with focus. I like the idea of the application's menu bar being separated from the app and always at the top of the screen (hey I've used a Mac lots), but way Unity auto-hides prevents me from rapidly clicking on it.

So is there anything I can do to disable the auto-hide feature? I am not asking how to disable the global menu.

Thanks in advance for replies.

[HDTimeshifter]

I didn't realize they had moved the app menu up to the system menu level until I read this. I had thought they had completely removed the app (Nautilus file manager) menu as I couldn't find it at first. Rather confusing as all previous GUIs I've used (Mac early days, then Windows, and most recently Gnome) kept the app menu within the app window.

Does anyone know if you can customize the interface so that all close boxes are in the upper right hand corner like Windows and Gnome Clear Window Scheme? There is a close box in the upper right corner of LibreWrite, but it only closes the document, not the application. Yes, with 6 GB and a QuadCore processor, I probably really don't need to worry about memory and having apps left resident in memory, but I prefer not to have stuff lingering that I'm not using - I'd rather have the max memory available for the 25+ browser tabs I tend to keep open all the time...

[nogoodnamesleft]

I didn't realize they had moved the app menu up to the system menu level until I read this ... confusing as all previous GUIs I've used (Mac early days, then Windows, and most recently Gnome) kept the app menu within the app window.


Early macs had it at the top. As far as I am aware it's always been that way.

Screenshot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Macintosh_Desktop.png

It is possible they might have moved it to the app itself and then back again. I used early Macs as a child and new Macs as an adult and missed the first color ones.

Edit: Don't know if that really is version 1 as the filename implies but I do recognise that screen from the letterbox mac days.

Edit: Changed link to wikipedia, found same image there.

[HDTimeshifter]

Oh now I remember - the Mac menu was context sensitive and would change depending on the app. I don't think there was actually a separate "system menu" - the Finder was actually another application. It's been over 15 years since I used a Mac (Mac XL {Lisa hybrid}, then Mac II, also monochrome, both System 4.x to 6.x and BSD UNIX dual-boots). I guess it was Microsoft that moved the app menus to the app window. The auto-hide toolbar was a MS invention that I never liked and always set it to always on. With modern large high resolution screens, there's no real need to hide the toolbars. It's more annoying when they pop up unintentionally.

[HDTimeshifter]

A similar problem is with the Launcher location. I heard there is no way to move it to the bottom of the screen. In Firefox, often when I want to click the previous page navigation button <-, the Launcher will annoyingly pop up instead.

[nogoodnamesleft]

You can move the launcher with compiz (install compiz CCSM)

ctrl-w will close a tab or window fast

autohide isnt useless: it is great for presentations etc, also sometimes people run VMs (separate instances of an OS) in a little window (eg i might run win7 or ubuntu inside a window on ubuntu eg to test something or whatever in which case that little window might get resized down to 1024x768 or something so i can monitor it while reading the web etc), or they use linux on a subnote etc, and do not forget tablets and stuff.

[alligoodw]

Although there are several replies, I never saw an answer to your question. Did you ever find the solution to having the global-menu working without auto-hide? I too hate this feature and would love to turn it off.