Detail tuunity's good and bad

This weekend, our HZLUG activity will be centered on the newly released Ubuntu11.04 (of course there will be other programs, please watch the announcement, during this time, I also experienced Ubuntu11.04, especially the Unity interface. This is the biggest change (like GNOME2-& gt; GNOME3) on the user interface since Ubuntu was released. It brings a brand new operation experience, but users disagree with it. My feelings are similar. On the one hand, I am used to the efficiency of Unity.

This weekend, our HZLUG activity will be centered on the new "Ubuntu 11.04" (of course there will be other programs, please watch the announcement, during this time, I also experienced Ubuntu 11.04, especially the Unity interface. This is the biggest change on the user interface (like GNOME 2-> GNOME 3) Since Ubuntu was released. It brings a brand new operation experience, but the user's praise for it is different.

My feelings are similar. On the one hand, I am used to some efficient operations of Unity, and on the other hand, I have to endure its instability and various inconsistent experiences. Next, I will write some articles to analyze the highlights and shortcomings of Unity from the perspective of user interface and interaction.

In the first article, let's talk about its Global Menu)

The global menu was originally designed for Mac OS X. In addition to saving a little space, the global menu can also be clicked to the menu with closed eyes (if this is a feature ). The disadvantage is that only one application menu is displayed at a time. Therefore, if you want to select an inactive application, you must activate the application first and then click the menu, it takes one more step than a desktop without a global menu.

Because I usually have fewer menus and more shortcut keys, I prefer to introduce Global menus. However, I was disappointed with the global menu of Unity. Specifically, the integration of the application is not very good. Example:

You have used Pidgin for chat. There are two types of Pidgin windows: the contact list window and the dialog window. The two windows have different menus.

For example, it is not difficult to find the window. This is what the global menu looks like when the dialog window is focused. By default, you can use Ctrl + W to close the window.

This is the global menu displayed when the Contact window is focused. You can press Ctrl + Q to close the entire application.

Are there any problems?

The fatal injury of Unity's global menu lies in this "fake global menu "!

In fact, the Unity global menu is not at the application level, but at the window level. If you know its implementation process, you will know that it is a Hack GTK +. Through a special pipeline, you can display the menus originally displayed in the window (GtkWindow, dynamically move to the Panel.

At the API level, there is still no support for global menus. When developing applications, developers still just put the GtkMenu into a separate GtkWindow.

After talking about this, I believe you know the specific performance of this problem:

When chatting in the session window, if I want to use the shortcut key Ctrl + Q to close the entire Pidgin, sorry, I cannot do it ~ I must use Alt + Tab to switch to the "Contact window", and then press Ctrl + Q to turn Pidgin off.

For Unity, the global menu not only saves a little space, but also makes it inconvenient.

Let's take a look at how Mac OS X's real global menu works. Take the example of using the Purple multi-protocol chat tool-Adium.

First, the global menu is always the same in the chat window or Contact window. Here, you can use the same shortcut key to operate on various contents.

The most consistent is Mac OS X's "CMD + Q" shortcut. No matter which application, this is a unified shortcut to close. As long as the current application is Adium, no matter which window I am focusing on, I only need to press "CMD + Q" and Adium will exit.

This is the behavior that global menus should show-the operating mechanism of global menus, part of which is the visual feeling, and part of which is the more efficient operation brought by the unified and consistent shortcut keys.

Ubuntu 11.04 Unity learned the "shape" of the global menu, but did not learn the "God", but it became inconvenient in some operations. In this regard, we still need to constantly strengthen and improve it.