GNOME 3.32 Planning To Retire Application Menus

[Guest]

It's a move in the right direction. I've never liked OSX-style global menus or anything similar. All they do is make the application require extra mouse movement.

That's thing though – when Gnome imitates Apple they do it very very lousily. They see an awesome feature like the global menu and they are like "let's copy that but put our own twist on it so that it's ours", and then the twist completely kills the UX. Just like having big buttons and much whitespace doesn't automatically make it as usable as OSX. Same goes for Elementary.

Simple != Simplistic

[uid313]

But on Windows 10 it is quite nice to right-click on the app icon in the task bar and you get a context menu where you can open recent files or such.

Example in Visual Studio you can get a list of recent solutions.
In Firefox you can open private window.

[sverris]

This being Gnome, it goes without saying nobody has bothered to check whether anyone wants this feature, before adding it. And now because the feature is a flop, Gnome still get praised for removing it

Some praise is right, if someone finally changes his mind to the better. Because lots of people never change their mind to the better...

[Spazturtle]

But on Windows 10 it is quite nice to right-click on the app icon in the task bar and you get a context menu where you can open recent files or such.

Example in Visual Studio you can get a list of recent solutions.
In Firefox you can open private window.

You can do the same in macOS, it's just a common sense design that users expect to work.

[duby229]

Obviously I don't use gnome, but ummm..... If there is no application menu how the fuck do you navigate through available applications? Most desktops have -multiple choices- for application menu's because it is critically important for every desktop.... Wtf???

[tildearrow]

How to fix GNOME:

- Have the Dash to Dock extension inside the shell by default
- Drop CSD, or at least fix it (especially in some dialogs where the OK/Cancel buttons are in the top bar)
- Reduce the thickness of the title bar in non-CSD applications
- Remove a little of air in the UI
- Support desktop icons again (but not via Nautilus)
- Don't tell the user that a window is ready
- Don't tell the user the computer will go to sleep in 1 minute. Seriously, if the user is not there, how is the user going to see that? (and it is unlikely the user will be back when the message pops up)
- Let me easily change the path (without pressing '/') in Open/Save dialogs
- Fix some of the icons that don't make sense (such as the "New" icon in gedit being a "tombstone", or the "Save" being an arrow pointing at a hard disk)
- Add more configuration options rather than hiding it in Tweaks or dconf (or even hardcoded)
- Fix XWayland timer-based VSync and learn to sync to the display's blank interval
- Fix Mutter on high-end graphics cards (yes, it feels slower on them)
- Separate the compositor and shell processes
- Stop breaking extension API
- Don't run JavaScript in the main shell thread
- Next time you want to add/remove a feature, first make a poll. This way you please most of your users.

[You-]

Obviously I don't use gnome, but ummm..... If there is no application menu how the fuck do you navigate through available applications? Most desktops have -multiple choices- for application menu's because it is critically important for every desktop.... Wtf???

The application menu in discussion is not used to cycle through applications. It belongs to the active application and often has the options of about and quit. Sometimes it will have an option for settings/preferences, though other/most times that will be on the main application window.

I remember when Nautilus used to have temporary icon resizing on the main application window and the permanent resizing in the application menu settings. It was confusing and seemed like a bug that the temporary resizing did not stick. They changed the option on the main application to be permanent aswell, but until then it created much confusion.

[Vistaus]

You can do the same in macOS, it's just a common sense design that users expect to work.

Depends on your use case. I never open recent files and stuff from context menus.

[Vistaus]

That's thing though – when Gnome imitates Apple they do it very very lousily. They see an awesome feature like the global menu and they are like "let's copy that but put our own twist on it so that it's ours", and then the twist completely kills the UX. Just like having big buttons and much whitespace doesn't automatically make it as usable as OSX. Same goes for Elementary.

Simple != Simplistic

I guess you're not familiar with the various OS's that have come and gone? 'Cause GNOME didn't copy Apple with this application menu feature, they copied webOS. webOS also had the menu on the exact same location for every app and it worked exactly the same as well (although on webOS, the menus were more populated with common features, so at least they unified it unlike GNOME with its secondary in-app menu). I'm a former webOS user, so I can tell you all about the features that GNOME copied from webOS (aside from the fact that early GNOME design blueprints also literally showed that they were inspired by webOS).

[You-]

WebOS had the advantage that applications could be guaranteed to be full screen and the menu felt a natural extension of the application. Atleast on the desktop (as opposed to laptop) chances of an application being full screen are close to zero.