Posted on July 8, 2010 - by jono
Indicator Panel Menu Rocks The House
Recently we have been investing in creating an implementation of a panel-based menu that we are planning on shipping with the 10.10 version of the Ubuntu Netbook Edition. As with our other projects, this is entirely Open Source and you can download, test and play with it from this page.
So far for testing purposes we have been leaving on the in-application menu, but yesterday I switched it off to get the full experience. To do this I edited /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80appmenu to set APPMENU_DISPLAY_BOTH=0. I was aware of the design justification of having a single menu; it is easier for users to find it due to it’s consistent place, and particularly for netbooks, it saves on significant screen-real estate use. Now I can absolutely see and feel the benefits; I am loving having the menu there and my desktop feels sleeker and more consistent.
Of course, there is much to be fixed — such as the fact that GIMP crashes the menu — but most apps are working great and while this is not designed or scoped for the desktop, I think I might just leave it on. 
What’s more, an added benefit of this implementation (and using the dbus-menu approach) is that KDE applications running in GNOME have their menu’s rendered as GTK widgets (and vice versa), helping to integrate GNOME and KDE apps better. Right now the in-app menus are still visible, but the following screenshot shows K3B’s menus rendered as GTK menus:
Awesome!
I just want to offer some kudos to Cody Russell for writing the menu, Aurélien Gâteau for his awesome work in ensuring all of this works with KDE, Jorge Castro for coordinating much of the testing, and for our awesome community of testers and bug reporters for helping to bang it into shape. You are going to help really make Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10 really rock, and of course anyone who chooses to use it on their desktop.
Go and find out more and play with it yourself here.
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July 8, 2010
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Not to be disgraceful of the work done, but call me over when it supports Firefox and OpenOffice. So far, no reason to switch from Global Menu.
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July 8, 2010
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This is excellent, I will have to try it with shutting off the application menus and letting the panel take them. Good progress so far, I am happy the Netbook Edition is getting some love.
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July 8, 2010
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This looks awesome. Thanks to Ubuntu for bringing innovation to Linux — debian user
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July 8, 2010
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The Ubuntu font looks pretty good, also.
Will the applet be included in Ubuntu proper?
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July 8, 2010
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And kudos to Apple for inventing it…
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July 9, 2010
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Bzzzz! Wrooong!
It was used in desktop environments way back in the ‘80-s even before Apple used it. d:
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July 8, 2010
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This is brilliant. I’ve always used the age old GnomeGlobalMenu only to find out that it doesn’t integrate well. No QT support, no XUL support. Now I can have a global menu that rocks.
I tested it a few days back and it made my Gimp and Inkscape crash with some D-Bus error. Is that still the case?
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July 8, 2010
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@Jono, I’d like to check out the font. I it is in private-beta but hey, I won’t tell anyone if it doesn’t look good.
Give me the OTF. please please please mate.
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July 8, 2010
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If you want to fix pixel waste then look at font height (both vera sans and yours seem quite tall) and also the waste of space in gtktreeview (ie, compare rhythmbox to say… itunes).
No reason we must have same fontsize for menus and in view of data (rows).
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July 9, 2010
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That is the main thing holding Gnome back from ever looking as sexy as OSX or even windows 7; no matter how you theme it everything ends up looking too chunky and big. Everything in a Gnome GUI just takes up more space than it should.
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July 9, 2010
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Agree. And it also doesn’t look like professional environment to work on. Now I figure out why I take ages to configure my Gnome and even though I sill doesn’t get an pleasant environment to work as OSX or Windows.
Please fix this fonts.
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July 8, 2010
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Cool, but… wasn’t the idea to get rid of menus like that from most places? Kinda like windoze did? Or google with Chrome… or the upcoming firefox… or opera etc?
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July 12, 2010
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I have been using Ubuntu since 7.04 and I am not trying to damper things. I appreciate all that has and is being done in the community. This feature needs to be fixed so that it is not a copy cat of OS X. I just don’t want Ubuntu to be scrutinized over something as petty as this from Apple.
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July 13, 2010
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I think it’s important to have the name of the application in the indicator panel (à la globalmenu/OSX).
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July 13, 2010
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looks like MacOSX to me. Be ready for the patent lawsuits.