Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Adds Support For Local Menus

[TheOne]

I like this change. I've never been a fan of a global menu even when I used to use OS X on a 2006/2007 MacBook Pro (a global menu was the least of my issues with that notebook). Saving vertical space or not, for me, Ubuntu's global menu is a pain when compared to a local menu especially when you're using multiple apps and windows that are not maximized. My experience was worse on high resolution and/or large displays.

I like the way they're integrating it as well. The local menu is integrated into the window title bar instead of dedicating a row of the window. The menu still only appears on mouse hover though. Looking at the video from the linked to site, when you mouse hover over the title bar of a non-active window, the local menu doesn't appear until that window becomes active (ie. click on it). I'd prefer the local menu to appear on any window on mouse hover. I could enable the focus to follow the mouse but I don't like that behavior myself.

Maybe, I'll move back to Ubuntu/Unity from Xubuntu some time in the future. Right now, I'm liking Thunar's custom actions feature and Xfce's Generic Monitor for custom panel applets. Maybe Canonical will implement a customizable context menu in their future file manager. I hear Nemo's Nemo Actions are pretty good and seems to have more features than Thunar's but from what I've read it's not likely going to be used by Ubuntu. As for custom panel applets, I've only seen indicator-sysmonitor but it isn't as customizable as Xfce's Generic Monitor which allows you to change fonts, size, colors, etc.

xfce is just the best environment for people that do real work on a computer. unity, gnome are toys and KDE is just too bloated

[guido12]

I like this change. I've never been a fan of a global menu even when I used to use OS X on a 2006/2007 MacBook Pro (a global menu was the least of my issues with that notebook). Saving vertical space or not, for me, Ubuntu's global menu is a pain when compared to a local menu especially when you're using multiple apps and windows that are not maximized. My experience was worse on high resolution and/or large displays.

I like the way they're integrating it as well. The local menu is integrated into the window title bar instead of dedicating a row of the window. The menu still only appears on mouse hover though. Looking at the video from the linked to site, when you mouse hover over the title bar of a non-active window, the local menu doesn't appear until that window becomes active (ie. click on it). I'd prefer the local menu to appear on any window on mouse hover. I could enable the focus to follow the mouse but I don't like that behavior myself.

Maybe, I'll move back to Ubuntu/Unity from Xubuntu some time in the future. Right now, I'm liking Thunar's custom actions feature and Xfce's Generic Monitor for custom panel applets. Maybe Canonical will implement a customizable context menu in their future file manager. I hear Nemo's Nemo Actions are pretty good and seems to have more features than Thunar's but from what I've read it's not likely going to be used by Ubuntu. As for custom panel applets, I've only seen indicator-sysmonitor but it isn't as customizable as Xfce's Generic Monitor which allows you to change fonts, size, colors, etc.

[mike4]

I like the Mac style as of 12.04 Unity. For Gnome I have to hide the top panel for the same effect.

[Luke_Wolf]

All right then: note the task bar at the top, with power down /sleep button, firefox menu, system tray and icon/title of current window on the right (when clicked this shows a task switcher although I prefer alt-tab on this 1024x600 eeepc).

There are no auto-hidden bars here, the only way to get more space is to press F11 to make FF fullscreeen.

Fair enough, that is indeed a global menu, although you're still not saving space vs local menus shoved into menu buttons or similar, but at least in this case integration with the panel is providing more functionality than just a straight menubar up top

[Pajn]

I think I've proven my point

Now show that again with an applications that doesn't feature a app specific menu,
like LibreOffice Writer.

Also Application specific menus kills global shortcut-keys to open the menu. On
Unity I can press Alt+F10 to navigate with my arrow-keys, in any program.
That is, if I for some reason doesn't want to use the HUD.
And second, it looks an behave different in different apps which is confusing for
users.

[ferry]

Yeah give me a screenshot, I switched over to plasma netbook on the VM to check what you said out, and moved around a window and at least on mageia the shell basically just removed the decorations without a global menu (see post #33)

All right then: note the task bar at the top, with power down /sleep button, firefox menu, system tray and icon/title of current window on the right (when clicked this shows a task switcher although I prefer alt-tab on this 1024x600 eeepc).

There are no auto-hidden bars here, the only way to get more space is to press F11 to make FF fullscreeen.

[Luke_Wolf]

In my experience with desktop managers, I didn't ever see much of a difference between LXDE, XFCE, and KDE.
Keyword: Much, and yes I understand the differences.

My personal favourite was and probably always will be the way Crunchbang uses Openbox as one.

And This right here is the reality, even fully optimized for vertical pixels the way plasma netbook is you're reclaiming... 2 maybe 3 lines of space aka ~ 1/2 inch /1cm (for an extremely optimistic 3 saved lines), global menus limit total potential savings to 1 line, maybe 2 because you have to keep the panel up top (local menu systems can remove the decorations to gain an additional line). It's really not a noticeable amount unless you're looking for it or comparing it side by side, which makes obsessing over vertical pixel space utterly absurd.

[Luke_Wolf]

Maybe you should keep thinking then. Your hideous KDE setup can't even start to compare to the Ubuntu layout, but more importantly you're comparing apples to oranges. You could save a lot of space by removing everything, but then you can't compare that to Unity or any useful UI.

Unity global menu saves vertical space when compared to the same layout without global menu. That's a fact even if it's beyond your understanding.

There are other ways of saving vertical space and you have shown your own peculiar disaster of an UI to prove it. KDE also saves space by ignoring the notion of "padding" or "white space" (KDE ignores a lot of UI/UX basics). That doesn't negate the above fact: Unity's global menu does save space when compared with the same layout wihtout the global menu, which, by the way, is the only logically acceptable comparison.

Delusional much?

I wasn't bothering to take the time to actually make a usable sidebar based system as I don't use that, the point was to compare global versus local menus with the same basic layout (Top panel is removed in KDE version as the only purpose it serves is to be a global menu, and some controls/indicators that can be shoved onto a panel on the left), as a result I took the default mageia desktop and just shifted the panel over to the left.

With the menubar collapsed into a menu button in order to compare only local vs global menus since the menubar goes into the titlebar in unity full screened you can clearly see that no pixels were saved by using a global menu. Pixels were only saved by methodologies that removed the menu bar as a separate line combining the titlebar and menu bar in the case of unity, and using a menu button in the case of KDE

[GreatEmerald]

Unity global menu saves vertical space when compared to the same layout without global menu. That's a fact even if it's beyond your understanding.

Not for non-maximised windows.

[profoundWHALE]

In my experience with desktop managers, I didn't ever see much of a difference between LXDE, XFCE, and KDE.
Keyword: Much, and yes I understand the differences.

My personal favourite was and probably always will be the way Crunchbang uses Openbox as one.