top bar, menu bar, panel or top panel

[Paddy Landau]

> ... I've had to refer to it as the 'top bar'...

Thank you, Barry; obvious in hindsight!

"Top bar" is an excellent term, because it says exactly what it appears
to be: a bar at the top of the screen. It matches our real-world
experience through an appropriate metaphor. (All computer terms are
metaphors.)

I realise that the new yelp standard seems to be "menu bar".

However, as the top bar contains the application title, the menu
(sometimes), various pieces of information, and application icons such
as Skype, Wine, Settings and Libre Office Quickstarter, I think that
"menu bar" is insufficient and even misleading --- as, in hindsight, is
"panel".

(A panel in real life is usually not thin, so it is clearly a
counter-descriptive word to use.)

The question becomes, then:

Do we use the yelp standard, or do we use a new standard that makes it
immediately obvious what we mean?

My initial thoughts are that we use the yelp standard for consistency,
and when introducing the term, we explain that we mean the "top bar with
the menu and other information", as well as putting it into the
glossary. Unfortunately, that is also potentially misleading because
several programs, including Libre Office, do not put their menu in the
"menu bar".

So, my preferred solution would be to use something immediately obvious
to the reader and to suggest to the yelp writers to adopt that standard.
If we use "top bar", we could also say, "The Launcher can be found on
the left bar."

Paddy
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