I've actually "asked tog" about the global menus on large monitors. he says his studies show they take less time overall even taking into account bring the cursor back to the app. he also said that pie menus could work to replace regular context menus even at the edge of the screen.
Perhaps it's because I come primarily from a Windows / BeOS background, but I actually prefer to NOT have a global menu at the top like Mac OS. While it may help with Fitts' Law because the menus are effectively infinitely tall, it also introduces a mode, especially combined with MacOS' choice in allowing a program to be open even if there are no open windows.
At work, we use a Jabber server and the Psi client on all the desktops. I have a Mac mini in my classroom, and when the client starts, I close the window to reduce screen clutter. The only problem is that I have click on the desktop or look at the menu itself when I come back to find out what app I’m using because technically I may still be "using" Psi even though all I can see is the Finder. I can’t count the number of times I’ve used a keyboard shortcut only to find that it didn’t work because I was working with a windowless app at the time. Slower? Definitely, but also easier for anyone to know context when working with more than one app at a time.
arielb wrote:
or maybe give a choice between mac, next, beos/windows and my minimalist idea. After all, we give a choice of scrollbars.
Not in Haiku, we don't -- the sources for that preferences app are still in the tree, but it is no longer maintained or included in the image. I can't figure out why Be even had it.
if I have app A and B open and using A, on windows i can see B’s menu so I know right away what to click on in B. With a mac, b’s menu is a surprise before you switch to it. So right now it doesn’t look good for mac and all I have is tog’s word that his studies show it’s faster.
I use tiny menu in firefox though it makes fitt’s even worse. it saves screen space since all the other buttons are on the same row. I wouldn’t like it for other apps because I’m very familiar with firefox as I use it all the time.
I wonder what you think about the Office 2007 ribbon? I saw 2 problems right away: it throws off any hope for a consistent Windows UI as you still need menus for all the other apps.
Also, it looks like it was designed for use of a single window that’s always maximized instead of multiple windows. I think a floating or docked palette would make more sense and probably would make it easier to do the same action on multiple open documents such as search and replace.
of course if we did that, microsoft would have to change everything once again and that would be pretty funny.
I believe that the mac style menu is faster just like the Fitt’s law predicts, but it also introduces confusing modality just like arieb describes. What I would like to see in Haiku is that when application uses full screen it would have its menu on the top of the screen just like in mac’s. In other situations, all applications would have their own menu under their title bars/tabs as usual in Windows and others.
This would allow fast usage of full screen programs, without any modality confusion when using two or more programs side by side and should also fit well with the Gestalt laws (i.e. no visual disconnection between application’s main window and menu).
As for the MS Office 2007 ribbon, I believe it is a huge mistake that will spread like a virus to other programs. I have seen how easily typical office workers freeze when something looks just a little out of the ordinary in the program they try to use. I bet they will have problems every time they have to switch to a strange ribbon tab from the one they are used to. I doubt there is any usability justification to the ribbon. It is just a chance for the sake of marketing and training consulting.
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