Comment 12 for bug 619477

Well, I agree with you that Unity is different, but anyway I think leaving the buttons in the menu bar is not the best idea, for the following reasons:

1) If you have dialog windows having the buttons in their title bar and application windows having them in the menu bar, this creates an inconsistency because for the user these windows often look the same. It’s difficult to draw the line: Are settings windows like the display properties or mouse properties dialogs or application windows? They are separate applications, but have “OK” and “Cancel” (or “Close”) buttons like dialogs. Where should their maximize/close buttons be? So instead of having the simple formula: “If window is maximized and thus has no title bar: buttons in menu; if it has a title bar: buttons in title bar”, the formula would be “Maximized windows and some non-maximized windows: buttons in menubar; Other non-maximized dialogs: Buttons in title bar”, which I don’t think is that easy to understand.

2) Another problem with the buttons in the menu bar: Imagine a user having Firefox open in the background, filling the whole screen, and then opens the sound preferences dialog from the sound menu. If this dialog’s close button is still in the menu bar, it will look for the user as it would be used to close Firefox, not the sound dialog.

3) I agree unmaximized application windows are not that common on netbooks, but you find a few of them: Take empathy, skype or other messaging software. And if you regard settings dialogs as application windows, there are even more. But you’re right, this probably is not the most important issue.

I also agree with you that the window buttons fit best in the space, but I think consistency is more important than looks. I also don’t think that removing the buttons from the title bars would be easier to implement than just filling the space with an icon instead of a string. Also, moving the buttons would change the usage concept while changing the text to icons would only change the look.