A great advantage of global menus is the ease of pointing them with the mouse.
According to Fitts' law, the time to point a target is function of its distance and size. By sticking the menus on the top part of the screen, the vertical dimension vanishes, since the user can just throw his mouse on top to reach them.
Unfortunately, two major design problems in Unity prevents from completely turning global menus to account.
Window buttons dead edges
The user can not throw his mouse to the top-left corner to reach the close button, since the edges are not clickable.
A bug was registered on Launchpad a couple of minutes before I wrote this post.
Menus not always shown
The problem is being discussed on Launchpad.
In my opinion, the current implementation is a terrible design :
- Lack of afordance : There is no obvious hint that a menu is available for the current application.
- Fitt's law fail : The user can not throw his mouse to the desired menu since it becomes visible only when he reaches it.
Fortunately, I am gesture and keyboard user (easystroke, Alt+F10, Alt+F4)
#ubuntu, #unity, #fail - Posted in the Ux category