Alan Horkan wrote:
The good thing, with two bars is that you get more easy accessible place to put controls on. The bad thing is that the majority of our potential users are used to just one bottom bar, just like they are used to have accelerator, brake and clutch in a specific order in any car they use, they expect their bottom bar in Gnome. This is probably why tests with real users indicate that the top menu should go.Linux Format magazine June 2006 (LXF80) reported on comments Nat Friedman[1] made in Paris: ... we developed an extension to Gnome that put a bar at the top, which looked a little like Macintosh. In our usability tests that we did last year we discovered that the bar was a really bad idea. It was confusing to Windows users who were used to having just one bar at the bottom, and confusing to Macintosh users who ere used to having one bar at the top and it behaving completely differently. So we'd written this thing that was confusing to everyone, and hundreds of [usability test] videos later we said, "Let's not do that!" [Text quoted as directly and accurately as possible from Linux format magazine.] Neither Sun Microsystems nor Novell use the top bar. They have not yet attempted to push these changes back upstream. This is especially worrying since it was Ximian (now part of Novell) who proposed the topbar in the first place. It seems odd to carry on with this strategy when the very people who proposed it are now saying it is a bad idea.
Another reason could be that they hit the wrong menu by mistake when they use fully maximized windows, and the application menu and the top menu bar resides very close to each other. I do things like that myself, now and again, and I have been using Gnome since version 2.4. as my only desktop and I use computers for a living, so I expect that it will not grow away as I get more accustomed to the environment.
If the top Gnome menu was removed, it would also be possible to use Mac style application menus. That way we could benefit from the Fits law in application menus where we do menu choises much more frequently than in the Gnome menu. As most of our potential users have windows background Mac style application menus should probably be optional, and not set by default. However, it would still be useful to have, especially on small screens as it saves screen space.
Another thing, we are speaking about top and bottom menu bars. This is a bit strange. If you look at almost any printer the default setting will be portrait output and most of the work people do fits that default. If we look at most computer screens, they have landscape layout. The obvious place to put controls would be on the sides of the screen, as if placed there,they would steal less room from the documents we are working on.
Regards Uno Engborg
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