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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: "Hide Menubar" proposal
From:       Maurizio Colucci <seguso.forever () tin ! it>
Date:       2005-02-20 10:10:21
Message-ID: 4218704E.6080409 () tin ! it
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Aaron Seigo wrote:
> On February 18, 2005 13:19, Sébastien Laoût wrote:
> 
>>Perhapse another option to disable the ghost menubar?
> 
> 
> perhaps we should move to a centralized menubar ala MacOS in KDE4. it helps 
> resolve these sorts of issues. Frans recently sent me a draft whitepaper on 
> the topic, and it's something that i believe some of us have considered off 
> and on. KDE4 is a good time to examine this in detail.
> 
> 

1. So, where is this paper? :-)

2. I'm afraid I'll have to go against the current trend once again. :-(

    I would like to point out a problem with the global menu approach. Usually
    it is better to separate things if possible. Having two distinct menus
    makes it obvious which is a capability of the application, and which is a
    global capability of kde. The advantage of making this distinction less
    evident is not immediately clear to me. Is it only the fact that a global
    menu is more easily reachable?

    On a related note: when an applicaiton starts, how would the user realize
    exactly WHICH new items the application has added to the global menu? THe 

    new items could be very well hidden in a sub-submenu, as far as I know.
    How would the user find them? It seem you should, at the very least,
    implement a sophisticated technique for FLASHING and HIGHLIGHTING menu
    items, for the global menu to be useful. But since the K-menu itself
    has been in need of such a thing and still doesn't have it, I doubt the
    new global menu will have it.


3. Menus provde a STATIC arrangement of functionality, and I was hoping
    people would move completely away from them. I created OneFinger to show
    that menus are an obsolete concept:

    (a) they don't scale well as you add items.
    (b) they are not searchable; you cannot narrow them by typing a keyword;
    (c) they cannot be sorted dynamically according to your needs;
    (d) any *dynamic* changes within them are not immediately apparent

    and so on.

    and now I see everyone re-exumating this concept and make menus even more
    central to KDE. Imagine my discomfort. :-)

Maurizio

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