KDE 4.10 Will Support Menu Buttons In The Title Bar

[Awesomeness]

While it's nice that Michael reported about that relatively big but easy to miss feature, he got confused: That feature isn't new. It's in 4.10 since quite some time. The recent change is just that he fixed additional window decoration to work with it (initially only Oxygen supported it):

The Laptop decoration got such a button and generic support has been added to the Aurorae theme engine. Now almost all decorations shipped with KWin can provide this button.

[Rigaldo]

Yes, but it's not part of the titlebar like in Windows.

AFAIK programs under X server can't control their window decoration much and put this kind of "fancy stuff" there ..
Except if they "ask" to not have decoration and simulate it themselves(see google chrome/chromium).

[pingufunkybeat]

Will this mean that Firefox can finally have the same cool orange menu button in Linux as it does in Windows?

It already does, with the Oxygen theme.

[xeekei]

It already has one. Not orange, but it's a button. Right-click on the toolbars and deselect the menu bar.

Yes, but it's not part of the titlebar like in Windows.

[GreatEmerald]

Will this mean that Firefox can finally have the same cool orange menu button in Linux as it does in Windows?

It already has one. Not orange, but it's a button. Right-click on the toolbars and deselect the menu bar.

[xeekei]

Will this mean that Firefox can finally have the same cool orange menu button in Linux as it does in Windows?

[schmidtbag]

It's still more than enough. The standard PC screens are 1920x1080 or 1920x1200. Laptop screens are 1366x768, yes, but even then I don't see many people complaining about those few pixels. If they were, they would put their taskbars on the side of the screen (which I have done on my tablet PC, but then it's due to the fact that the items there are easier to access more than anything else). I also don't see how that impacts multi-tasking, as people usually tile windows side-by-side when they do that, and thus they worry about horizontal, and not vertical space more. Plus, that's why we have virtual desktops. As for phones, sure, but phones don't run KDE to begin with.

Those are the industry standard and the average screen size of new displays but most computers still operate below 1680x1050. People don't put task bars on the side because that becomes very inconvenient and takes up more space than it does on the bottom. Not even many linux DEs can do it right, but Mac can and I've seen plenty of people who put their dock on the side.
I agree about the virtual desktops, but unfortunately not everyone uses them even when they have the option.

Crude ribbon bars already exist, they are called icon bars with adjustable height. Not all programs support that (oddly enough), but at least those that use KDE UIs have it:

That's not a ribbon bar, that's just a toolbar with icons. Ribbon bars are supposed to reflect the drop down menus they replace. Submenus would just become distinct categories.

[newwen]

Something like the megamenus concept for gnome.


is much better than the osx ripoff of global menus.

[GreatEmerald]

I see what you mean but screens are getting wider, not taller. Its been I don't know how many years since 800x600 monitors were released (hell its been over 10 years since 1024x768 monitors were common) yet the average PC hasn't gained more than 500 pixels in the Y axis while many reach over 1000 in X. People are also multitasking more these days, where title bars along side menus are just extra clutter. As another point to make, phones and many tablets have poor screen resolutions where if you were to run linux on them, those extra 28 pixels or so make a difference. With screens getting so wide these days, there's beginning to be a lot of empty space in the title bar which can kinda give a "useless" feel to it.


What I think would be interesting is a plugin that does a crude ribbon bar. I know a lot of people hate it (I used to myself) but there are points where it is more handy than a standard menu. Since this would be automatic for every program, it obviously can't be as dynamic and feature rich as a ribbon that was made intentionally but it should be easily doable.

It's still more than enough. The standard PC screens are 1920x1080 or 1920x1200. Laptop screens are 1366x768, yes, but even then I don't see many people complaining about those few pixels. If they were, they would put their taskbars on the side of the screen (which I have done on my tablet PC, but then it's due to the fact that the items there are easier to access more than anything else). I also don't see how that impacts multi-tasking, as people usually tile windows side-by-side when they do that, and thus they worry about horizontal, and not vertical space more. Plus, that's why we have virtual desktops. As for phones, sure, but phones don't run KDE to begin with.

Crude ribbon bars already exist, they are called icon bars with adjustable height. Not all programs support that (oddly enough), but at least those that use KDE UIs have it:

[CTown]

I never understood the recent push to title bar buttons. If we were using 800x600 resolution displays, then sure, it would be important, but now... Well, I suppose more choices don't hurt. Hopefully it won't be on by default, though.

It's not on by default, the option lies in "System Settings" -> "Application Appearance" -> "Fine Tuning" -> set last drop box to "Title bar button".

The option looks very nice. Most KDE apps have the most important functions in the navigation bar, making the menus useless most of the time. This option just puts the menus in a drop down menu when you click on the button in the window decoration of that window. I feel it's a very clever use of appmenu (versus having a global menu-bar).

Another new option is to have the menu autohide until you put the mouse on the top of the screen (sort of like a panel set to autohide).