[kde-guidelines] Styleguide: Menu bar

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 23.09.2013 14:09, Heiko Tietze wrote:
> Am Montag, 23. September 2013, 14:04:24 schrieb Thomas Pfeiffer:
>> We'd have to convince at least Frank Rieninghaus to change Dolphin and
>> Andrea Diamantini to change Rekonq, then. They are only two
>> applications, but two _very_ prominent ones which would be violating
>> that guideline, and I fear that people might be more likely to follow
>> the example of two very popular applications than our guidelines. at
>> least that's how it's often been in the past: If a  popular application
>> does something differently, others are likely to follow suit sooner or
>> later.
>
> My dolphin has a meu bar, and AFAIK konqueror is the default browser. But this
> discussion deals with the weakest argument. More relevant for a styleguide
> should be the reason why a control or interaction is recommended and another
> not.

Dolphin can have a menu bar, yes, but by default it's hidden behind a 
menu button. And even if it were visible by default, it would still be 
_possible_ to hide it behind a menu button.
And I do not really see a problem with this. I am all for showing the 
menu bar by default, but users consciously decides that they prefer to 
have it in a button, why should we not allow them to do  that? Maybe 
they do not need it often, so why always have it consume space? And it's 
easy to switch back to the menu bar, it's not hidden behind a keyboard 
shortcut.
I get the "overview over the functions of an application" point, that's 
why I am for showing it by default. However, after a user has learned 
which functions are available and from there on hardly ever use the menu 
(like I for example hardly ever use the Dolphin menu bar anymore), I 
still see no reason to not allow switching to the menu button.

In fact, KWin has implemented a way to hide the menu bar of every 
application behind a button in the window border. That button is why too 
small in Oxygen, but that's a different story. However, it's another 
indicator for me that there are people who do not find a menu bar very 
useful.