How to permanently display the global menu?

[MonkeyPaw]

I would be interested in seeing such a patent, if one exists. Besides, if there is one it's probably long since expired.

Either way, if that's the only limitation it would be useful to communicate that.

So much UI research shows the value of making an app's primary command access self-evident that concealing that from the user makes the project look unnecessarily silly.

If it's a legal limitation, noting that puts the blame where appropriate.

If it's a design decision, it's a bug that needs to be fixed.

While it sounds ridiculous to think that having the command menus visible in the top bar is patented, consider that Apple has sued and is suing for less. Though most of their battles are in their lucrative iOS market.

[coldjeanz]

I've been asking about this for a while too. I also believe they autohide it on purpose. I don't see any benefit to keeping it hidden, sometimes I'll be using a new application and I'll completely forget that the menu exists up there. I know you can get rid of the global menu completely but I find it looks even worse when it's attached to the program. Global menu is fine, just give us the option to make it permanent is all I ask.

[number2]

Hello. You can install my version of unity on your Ubuntu 12.04 especially modified to always display global menu.

First, add ppa:anton0/unity to your sources.list, update your system, reboot, and enable /apps/compiz-1/plugins/unityshell/screen0/options/menu_always_visible in your gconf settings.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:anton0/unity
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

# Reboot

gconftool-2 -s --type boolean /apps/compiz-1/plugins/unityshell/screen0/options/menu_always_visible true

[coldjeanz]

Sounds interesting but I'm hesitant about breaking my setup or something. Any risk takers want to try it and see if it works?

[number2]

Sounds interesting but I'm hesitant about breaking my setup or something. Any risk takers want to try it and see if it works?

I using it on my machine right now. Also tested ppa on fresh install in VirtualBox.

If something break you can bring back default global menu behavior using following command:

gconftool-2 -s --type boolean /apps/compiz-1/plugins/unityshell/screen0/options/menu_always_visible false

Or remove PPA from sources.list and downgrade to previous version using this command:

sudo apt-get install unity=5.12-0ubuntu1 libunity-core-5.0-5=5.12-0ubuntu1 unity-common=5.12-0ubuntu1 unity-services=5.12-0ubuntu1

[coldjeanz]

How does it work exactly? Does it just constantly show the menu for the app and then automatically switch to another menu when you change apps? Sorry I just want to get a little more info bc I install it.

[number2]

How does it work exactly? Does it just constantly show the menu for the app and then automatically switch to another menu when you change apps? Sorry I just want to get a little more info bc I install it.

It constantly show menu of currently active window. When you switch window, menu changes as well. It also display window title to the right of menu. As I said, everything works fine. At least I didn't notice any bugs for last day using it on my machine.

[coldjeanz]

Cool it seems to work nice job! Only thing is that the name off the application is pushed to the right of the menu which looks a bit strange since I rarely maximize any apps. Is there a way to move the name of the app back to the left and have the menu to the right of it?

[d4m1r]

Bump, do any alternatives exist now for change the default behaviour?

I want the global menu always shown (not hover to show) but I don't want to install any 3rd party PPA's that overwrite my stock unity files....Anyway to get it changed on vanilla 12.04 LTS?

[philinux]

Bump, do any alternatives exist now for change the default behaviour?

I want the global menu always shown (not hover to show) but I don't want to install any 3rd party PPA's that overwrite my stock unity files....Anyway to get it changed on vanilla 12.04 LTS?

IIRC only way is to disable global menu completely and go back to the classic way.