Eliminate Menubars
Written for GoldOS by john on 2009-12-31
Recently there have been many moves to eliminate the menu-bar from the user interface. They are scarce in the Windows 7 UI, they are no longer in Chrome, and there have been some moves to hide it in Firefox 4.0, so now would be a good time to get together and get rid of this outdated user interface tool. Here is some of the reasons for this change:
- Menu-bars in General:
The biggest reason actually for ditching the menu-bar widget in GoldOS is the idea that all menu widgets should come to be from right clicks. Most people associate menus with right-clicks in their head to some extent, so the menu-bars are a sort of anomaly.
In addition to this the menu-bar generally wastes a lot of horizontal space within the row in which the menu-bar is contained, and the user usually looks at other elements within the UI so most of the time the horizontal space which is used is also being wasted. This is even worse in the global menu-bar since the global menu-bar is farther from the application, so the user tends to completely forget about it.
Finally, menu-bars, even global ones, are not really that good for speed in common tasks. Hotkeys and other keyboard commands are generally the quickest way for a user to repeat common tasks, most experienced users will use crtl+c to copy, rather then go to edit/copy.
- Applications/
These menus seen in Gnome 2.0 are far inferior to the corner targets seen in the Mezzo Desktop, due to Fitt's Law and the fact that you can right click the corner targets as an alternative way of getting to these menus.
- Local Menu-bars:
These menus take up a lot of space when more then one application is visible at the same time, they are essentially inferior to the global menu-bar because of Fitt's Law, and they do not work very well if the window is moved towards the bottom-right part of the screen.
- Global Menu-bars:
The problem with these menu-bars is they do not work well with multiple monitors, they form a panel that takes away screen space from applications, they are rarely looked at since they are farther away, and they should be close to the window because like things should be grouped together.
- GoldOS
GoldOS originally used the local menu-bar as that is what most people are used to, it was soon realized that global menu-bars utilize Fitt's law, save space and they are much more efficient for a webpage's special needs. However, it is now becoming clear that the global menu-bar is often forgotten about by the user and that it would be better to associate menus with right-clicks, as such soon the menu-bar will soon get their own file, only to be loaded if the user really wants them.
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Here is the alternative that will be implemented in GoldOS. Menus will come to be when you right click the empty space in the titlebar, or perhaps if you click a hot-key such as alt. There may also be an option to use a Treeview or a desktop-wide menu to access an application's functions.
