Comment 13 for bug 619477

I wish we had the luxury of playing around with both concepts for a while :(, because it's indeed hard to pick the right approach.

Anyhow, I have one more point to raise - accessibility.

I don't know which screen size you are using, but on my 14" display the top bar is so narrow that an application icon squeezed or cut into that place would hardly be recognizable. Imagine that on a 10" (or even 7" display).

Compare that with the icons in the system tray (e.g. envelope and sound volume). They are simple and monochromatic, i.e. specially crafted to look good in small sizes. The regular application icons are different - they are colorful and often have fine details.

Also, it wouldn't serve much purpose anyway, since the active application has an indicator in the dock.
Again, for accessibility reasons, it is not advisable to make system font too small, so freeing space in the title of unmaximized windows could help accommodate longer application titles.