I think Vincent Moulin hit the nail in the head with his idea of windows not
maximized having their menus inside of them instead of the top. I've found
myself feeling a bit confused as to what app did the global menu belong to,
when
working with multiple, unmaximized windows, something I always feel when using
Mac OS X (specially when I want to open a menu item of a non-focused window: in
these cases I have to click the titlebar of the app, *then* access the global
menu. Also sometimes I often make the assumption that the global menu is the
menu of the unfocused window). Also I think the purpose of the global menu (to
increase available height) looses its purpose on unmaximed windows, because in
those cases the user isn't trying to optimize his viewing area, so to speak.
Because if he were, he could just maximize it and get the bonus space at top.
Also the time you spend back and forth with your mouse moving from the
unmaximized window to the global menu convinces me that Vincent Moulin's idea
is
the best way to go.
There is only one problem, windows that don't get maximized, yet are big enough
to fill the available area, in this case there is a tremendous waste of space,
with the empty global menu on top, the titlebar of the window, and the local
menu bar of the app, and only then the app itself. Of course you could say that
the user would understand that by maximizing the app the free space dedicated
to
the app would increase, but I don't know how clever users are in this respect
(some kind of test could clarify this). One possible solution to this "problem"
(I'm not sure if it's really a big issue, I mean, users should get that to
increase space they could maximize the app, right?) is to make it so that all
apps open maximized, but then there's the problem of users who want to just
open
a little program, like a text editor, or a file manager window (or two), to
edit some small script, move or copy a file from here to there (or having a
small script in a small editor program, and a console open to run/compile it),
For these users, having all apps maximized is contrary to what they are used
to, and may push them away from unity.
So, what do you guys think?
Daniel
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