On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 11:19 AM, Cody Russell <[email protected]> wrote: > Jorge Castro just pinged me and showed me the following: > http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-chrome-tests-unified-menu.html > Kind of interesting, and I thought I'd post it to the list (if it hasn't > already been posted) and see what our design-minded community thinks of > these types of condensed menuitems. They strike me as potentially > interesting since we're always looking for ways to save vertical space on > UNE. > The obvious issue is that accelerator/shortcut labels are not displayed for > these items. Another potential issue is that it could affect the feel of > left/right keying between menus. This is not really an issue so much for > Chrome since they only have one menu here. > / Cody
That unified menu has a “Tools” submenu. As a result, I am not a fan. “Tools” is meaningless, especially given that the menu itself is a picture of a tool. The computer is a tool. Copy & Paste are tools. The keyboard is a tool. A boat anchor is a tool. Submenus are evil, too, and that is one thing the Chrome menu often does a great job not having. Every time you add a layer of categorization, you are hiding something and forcing somebody to slow down. If the things in that category have so little to do with each other that “Tools” is the best possible adjective, They Don't Belong In A Category! Having commented grumpily about that new design, Chrome as it is provides a wonderful example of the value of condensed menus. Their two menus on the top right are considerably more meaningful, and better categorized, than the 5ish menus we have in most Gnome apps. In addition, Chrome's menus aren't attached to a 100% wide horizontal bar that takes up the rest of their space, so there is no further incentive to expand them “because there's room, so it may as well be used.” Because the menu works so well, Chrome doesn't need another 100% wide bar with big icons below it. The menu already does the job properly. How did they do it? Simple! They didn't give in to “tradition.” They didn't think “we'd better have a File menu and stick Quit and Options under there because everyone else does.” Instead, they designed the menu layout that makes the most sense for their specific application. They created their own narrow categories that perfectly group the functionality specific to a web browser. Clever, indeed. _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
