for right click/context menus and other menus, instead of a single column that keeps getting longer with more options, how about we have multiple vertical columns after a certain point? would make it quicker to get to all the options and we would likely not need to scroll. I already encountered such an issue with the main app menu. It runs off the bottom of the screen but I can’t scroll it to get to the items on the part of the menu that runs below the bottom edge of the screen.
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It had been suggested to use categories, but wasn’t taken up…
The resolution picker already works like this, for other menus it is a question of if it makes sense. For deskbar it probably makes more sense to redesign it a bit 
the resolution picker menu looks like a normal menu to me
I’m not sure why you are encounter this bug it should move the menu up until it fits on the screen and turn on scroll arrows after that. That’s the real issue.
Multiple menus, more than 2 levels deep is bad ui despite the fact that we do it sometimes like in drill-down menus. It has been suggested before that we put apps into categories instead of presenting them as a flat list and maybe we will do that, but it won’t fix the underlying issue as menus can be tall.
I’m suggesting that menus have multiple columns of items instead of a single column. Like a table or a grid of items instead of a simple list.
I see now, you want to arrange the apps menu in a matrix instead of a column.
While we already have the API for a matrix menu (e.g. when you have many resolutions in the Screen prefs, or StyledEdit’s style colors), I don’t think it’s a good general solution for displaying an arbitrary large number of items.
Imagine displaying the contents of a folder with hundreds of files in Tracker’s drill-down menu. You’d end up with a matrix menu filling the whole screen, and even then, you’ll have to scroll around when there are more files than fit the screen.
Haiku already provides means to ease handling tall menus:
- PageUp/Down scrolls page-wise
- Holding SHIFT while using the mouse-wheel speeds up the scrolling
Additional features that’d be nice would be a way to jump to files or filter the menu, similar to Tracker’s behaviour without/with type-ahead filtering. For example, when a menu is open:
- start typing and the selection jumps to the item starting with the entered letters (Q: what to do with the mouse pointer? Jump to the selected entry?)
- Hold SHIFT while typing filters the menu items accordingly. ESC clears the filter.
a menu with hundreds of items is useless as a list and seems unlikely in the first place, but in such an event, a matrix view with that many items may eventually have to scroll, but as I’ve reported, despite what you are all saying, the menus do not scroll for me.
So, I guess the desktop is running off the bottom of the screen cuz I can’t see the deskbar if I move it down there, but the question is why?
Is it possible your screen resolution is set wrong (too tall)?
the resolution can be set to a variety of different resolutions, so yeah. In my VM, the desktop of Haiku runs off the bottom of the virtual screen and while some of the other resolution fix this, they give me a much smaller screen.
Well, yeah, everyone thinks you have bare metal Haiku .. that explains some if you have issues so things are not on the (theoretically full) screen ..
It would make easier if you mention your Haiku is in a VM.
Then .. you get different suggestions that might help, and those who do not have experiences with Haiku in VM .. may not try to give advices for your problem.
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I’ve mentioned it in other posts and I am running the VM in fullscreen.
Yeah, overall on deskbar since the Applications menu can become really long.
Notice that this issue show that Haiku has reach a point BeOS never really did: most end users can now have enough apps installed (thanks to ports and alive ecosystem) to make the Deskbar design for its apps menu no more adequate.
In a sense, it’s a good news.
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For this, the arrow keys should work!
Scrolling the hidden apps to the end of the list!
Maybe a approach to resize the list would work! Something like a flying list with resize option!
Edit: Sure, we read all posts in here. (of course not!).
Would it make sense, to not loop to the top of the menu, and instead scroll the menu.
Like it is done with the mouse over on the last entry?
The Arrow key up and down, should behave like the mouse over then.
So the menu would at least scroll to the final bottom and not cycle to the top again, which make not much sense to me!
Edit: Similar behavior of the Mouse-Wheel, too!