Hello all,
the goal here is not to rekindle the old debate Unity vs Other D.E., but to speak of something I would not like to loose leaving Unity: vertical space.
The debate Unity vs Others was very subjective, the haters having no objective fact on the matter. Here is an objective fact in favour of Unity, with some images it's more clear:
Unity
Gnome
Side by side (red zone is the "lost" area with Gnome)
That is only an example with Firefox, but Unity does that for (almost) every application.
The factual issue
So, since a few years ago, someone decided screen MUST have the ratio 16/9, and since everyone followed that, "vertical space" became a scarce resource.
To fight that, Unity did a nice thing: put the application menu in the title bar of the application, and also when the application is maximised, merge the title bar with the top panel.
By combining these two tricks, you save "two bars" and as can be seen in the illustration, with firefox as example, the benefit is 57 pixels.
That represents more than 5% of space in HD (1920x1080) and around 7.5% on my small 14" at work with its 1366x768 definition.
So using Gnome 3-as is would be a big regression screen-wise.
The research so far
With the help of fellow French Ubunteros (see here: https://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=2025479), we have established that Unity is unique as a D.E. for this maximised use of vertical space.
Other D.E. can more or less approach that, but they need some add-ons/extensions.
For Gnome there is Unite that works with title bars... but does nothing with menus. That is half the solution then. Instead of "losing" 2 bars, you loose only 1!
There is also a Gnome Extension: Global App Menu that looks to do something on menus, but it is clearly marked "experimental" and there is a ticket on its GitHub about the work possibly be discontinued.
From what I have read, it is indeed not an easy task to do what Unity started. Indeed, title bars are exposed to the D.E. for several reasons: close/minimise/maximise buttons, grab, etc... Then D.E. extensions can easily manipulate those title bars, like merging it to top panel when relevant.
But the menu bar belongs to the application space and is generally handled by the U.I. toolkit (GTK for Gnome). Hence, without the cooperation of the application itself or a heavy hack on the toolkit, moving the app menu out is a hard task!
Another alternative that was flagged is Ubuntu Mate with Mutiny and some other extensions. Same again, Gnome 2 that is still used for Mate cannot by itself do the job. The standard layout is even worse in Mate since on top of all those bars clutter, you get an additional horizontal bar with the task bar.
We have also established that menus are bad... and I agree with that, Unity eliminated them system wide, replacing them with icons (like on your phone!), recent lists, and natural search.
But still, menus is the way 98% of applications still work, and for the transition we are still used to them.
Firefox understanding that tried to remove the menu, and that was also for the sake of saving "vertical space". So that might not have been a good example to illustrate this issue with firefox that already made steps in the right direction, independently of the D.E.
So, bear in mind again the illustration was only an example, and I am not searching a firefox-only solution, but a system-wide one!
Your advise?
So the question is, what is your advise, to continue enjoying the maximum possible "vertical space" and avoid cluttered useless horizontal bars?
- 18.04 with Unity?
- 18.04 Gnome 3 + extensions? (which ones?)
- 18.04 Mate + extensions?
- Other D.E. we don't know of and that would do the trick out of the box?
Thanks in advance to all!
Adv Reply
Originally Posted by Frogs Hair
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