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Global Menu

Summary

Provide a choice for using a global menu in GNOME. This is a minor step toward a Document Centric GNOME, which is the default desktop environment of Fedora. The major competititors (Windows and OSX) has already moved and is moving toward document centric environments.

As 'The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content.', we should catch up the trend before we are left behind by propriate softwares again, if it is possible.

Below is a screenshot of a Fedora 8 Default theme with global menu enabled. File:Features GlobalMenu Screenshot.png

Owner

Name: YuFeng

Current status

Targeted release:
Last updated: March, 4th, 2008
Percentage of completion: 50%

Detailed Description

Provide a choice for using a global menu in GNOME. The project already exists, and already works. RPMs are built, but few Fedora people knows this, comparing to the number of Ubuntu people.

This is the screenshot of the wasted top panel in a default Fedora Setup. Top Panel is the easiest place for users to find out. File:Features GlobalMenu WastedTopPanel.png

One way to make use of the top panel is to use Global Menu.

Benefit to Fedora

It's just nice. Having every application's menu bar in the same position is more efficient.

Some people will argue that it is a OSX or MAC cloning. Some people will used it for cloning OSX. However With Fedora's default theme, a Global Menu also looks neat.

Scope

A variation of GTK is needed, to provide compatibility of non-global menu applications. Or an alternative is to patch every gnome application to build with GnomenuMenuBar (global menu bar) instead of GtkMenuBar.

Test Plan

http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-gnome/issues/detail?id=75&colspec=ID%20Status%20ClaimedBy%20Summary

User Experience

Users can choose to use Global Menu or In-window Menu. If they choose to use Global Menu, application's menu bar will show up in the top panel. If they choose to use In-Window Menu, menu bar will show up in applications.

Dependencies

gtk2-aqd; libgnomenu; gnome-globalmenu-applet

Contingency Plan

Don't accept it.

Documentation

http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/

Release Notes

http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/wiki/ReleaseNotes

Comments and Discussion

See Talk:Features/GlobalMenu

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