solution?

[Tollef Fog Heen]

* Eric Dunbar 

| On 12/19/05, Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen at canonical.com> wrote:
| > * Eric Dunbar
| >
| > | (not to mention the faulty paradigm of menubar-in-window which makes
| > | it much harder to use menus, especially for people with limited or
| > | degenerating fine motor skills).
| >
| > I disagree with you calling it a faulty paradigm, since it enables
| > another important paradigm: focus-follows-mouse.  I'm also one of
| > those people who like to maximise screen estate, so I tend to turn off
| > the menu completely and just have the application itself on the
| > screen without a lot of visual clutter around.
|
| They are not necessarily incompatible!
|
| It is quite possible to keep focus-follows-mouse with a fixed menu
| bar. It combines the undisputed advantage of using fixed targets with
| the advantage offered by focus-follows-mouse.

Apart from the horrendous way it's done in MOSX where menu focus isn't
the same as keyboard focus, I don't see how you can do that?

| On an "average user" basis I've seen fixed-menu bars (FMBs) used far
| more frequently and effectively than focus-follows-mouse (FFM). FFM
| requires a lot more advanced computer using skill than FMB (or even
| menu bar-in-window), and, when I've introduced people to FFM they
| invariably don't like it (I like it sometimes, but, on the whole I
| don't... it simply doesn't make for smooth work flow... I find it to
| be a "novelty" item).

Yes, it takes a while to get used to and I'm certainly not advocating
it to be on by default.  I just like to have it working for me as well.


[...]

| "I'm also one of those people who like to maximise screen estate, so I
| tend to turn off the menu completely and just have the application
| itself on the screen without a lot of visual clutter around."
|
| I'm curious Tollef, did you come from the Windows world for your early
| GUI experiences?

No, I started out with Macs and GEM at about the same time back in
1985 or 1986 or so, then later moved on to windows, but felt a lot
more comfortable in DOS and used that + MacOS + OS/2 until Windows 95
came out.  I then used Windows 95 for a while, then some Windows NT
before I got interested in Linux and ran a mix of Windows NT and
Linux, from around 1997 or thereabouts.  A couple of years later, I
only used Linux, except for games, where I still use Windows.

| Unfortunately, that forces one to go to the single application
| paradigm, and, sometimes you lose the menu bar (which is Ok for
| basic web browsing or word processing but not for real work).

I don't see how I'm forced to that, I use keyboard shortcuts, and I
use virtual desktops.  Note also that even I like to maximise screen
estate, that does not mean I maximise my applications.  I seldom run
my terminals in full-screen, for instance.

[...]

| PSS Simply focusing on GNOME since that's what most Ubuntuers
| (Ubuntuists?) use, not because it's necessarily better or worse than
| KDE/fluxbox/whatever.

I generally use GNOME with Openbox; I like to point out that GNOME is
not a window manager, it's a desktop environment.

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen                                                        ,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are      : :' :
                                                                      `. `' 
                                                                        `-