Bug 168070 - Hide menubar with Ctrl+M in apps
Summary: Hide menubar with Ctrl+M in apps
Status: RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Alias: None
Product: kde
Classification: I don't know
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: 4.1.0
Platform: unspecified Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Unassigned bugs mailing-list
URL:
Keywords:
: 130933 200177 202389 278867 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: 174944
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Reported: 2008-08-02 09:05 UTC by dienadel
Modified: 2020-09-29 21:38 UTC (History)
18 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


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Description dienadel 2008-08-02 09:05:20 UTC
Version:            (using KDE 4.1.0)
Installed from:    Unlisted Binary Package
OS:                Linux

Hello,

I'm actually playing with KDE 4.1 before the big change from 3.5.9. One of the things that i've changed is the way i use apps. Once the app is properly configurated, and placed the icons that i need, the menu bar is no needed in my day to day work. So, i hide it with Ctrl+M. In my 1280x800 display, all vertical space is wellcome :-) and, why not? at least for me, is visually better :-)

This, can be done in many apps, like konqueror, kget, dolphin, okular, kopete, gwenvieew, etc... But in other apps, the menubar can't be hide, nor option in menubar, nor Ctrl+M.

A not complete list of apps that can't be hide the menubar:
akregator, kwrite, kmail, system monitor, juk, dragon player....

KDE should provide this option to all apps, to get a concordant DE.

I don't know if this request must be created for each apps involved, or this can be sent to all devs in the way "all KDE apps must have this option, make sure yours have it".

Any information needed or just comments, say them.

Thanks for reading it. Hope this helps to make KDE better.

Bye

Dienadel
Comment 1 Teemu Rytilahti 2008-08-22 09:17:00 UTC
SVN commit 850719 by rytilahti:

add support for toggling the menubar with kstandardaction

CCBUGS:168070

 M  +2 -1      akregator_shell.rc  
 M  +9 -0      mainwindow.cpp  
 M  +1 -0      mainwindow.h  

Will backport it soon to 4.1 branch. Thanks for your report :)
Comment 2 Dread Knight 2008-09-12 23:33:48 UTC
+1 I really like how Google Chrome web browser does things. I never really liked menus, too much bloat, they look very 80's, not much to do with a modern desktop. Plain scary.


Voted!
Comment 3 Ljubomir Simin 2008-09-13 01:22:14 UTC
I'd rather see a global menubar from kde3 ported. 
Comment 4 Fri13 2008-09-14 15:40:51 UTC
I wait this will get implented to 4.2 or 4.3. The menu is really very 80's style and is not needed always in basic or daily use. 

I hope that Amarok developers would understand too this kind important UI feature, but I am afraid it is not the case.

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=169250
Comment 5 Dread Knight 2008-09-14 17:39:24 UTC
Perhaps it's the time for the HIG to actually get changed and get rid of menus once and for all.
Freedesktop.org might be responsible for the HIG (human interface guidelines), I'm not entirely sure; anyway at least Gnome and KDE have their own HIG's.

So we should really aim for the source of problems, since HIG's imply for apps to have old-fashioned retro menus.
We could plan out for a petition on the brainstorm.ubuntu.com site;

The plan of action would be a a nice post worked out explaining the situation as well as getting people to vote it and provide positive feedback as soon as it's posted in order to make a 'big wave' right from the start and leave no room for doubts :D Mass manipulation ftw.

Anyone in for this?
Comment 6 Ljubomir Simin 2008-09-14 18:31:36 UTC
Well I for one don't feel the urge to ditch the main menus, nor I see any reasons to. Keep them simple and sensible - yes, remove altogether - why?
The fact that there are the apps that don't have it doesn't mean there's no use for it.  If you want to get rid of them in any particular app than talk to that app's developer(s). That said, I'm not completely against your idea, just don't see the clear benefits of it. And saying that something "looks 80's" is not an argument :)
Comment 7 Dread Knight 2008-09-14 19:42:02 UTC
How about replacing them with 'graphical' tool bars containing the most essential stuff from the menus (icons + text perhaps)  ?
Comment 8 Ljubomir Simin 2008-09-14 20:32:11 UTC
Sounds interesting, more detailed proposal would be nice to see/read.
But I fear this starts being offtopic to this particular bug report.
Comment 9 Laurens Vanhove 2008-09-14 22:11:08 UTC
I'm looking into this ... adding the showmenubar options is quite trivial ! Even if I'm a bit troubled by bug http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171080   If the app devs are ok with it though, adding the showmenubar option can be rapidly done :-)

But it would be nice to know if there are any guidelines on this, are all kde apps supposed to have a hide menubar option or is this at the discretion of the developper ?
Comment 10 dienadel 2008-09-15 08:02:27 UTC
Hello,

In the thread posted in https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=169250, there is a post by Kevin Funk that says about amarok2: "the "hide menu" option was removed due to a large number of users inadvertently hiding it and not knowing how to restore it".

Well, sometime ago that happened to me in ark, i hide the menu bar, and didn't know how to return it. So i undestand kevin.

The problem was that in the menubar there was an option to hide it, while, once it was hidden, there wasn't an option to make it visible again. This doesn't happen in konsole, foe example. Once is was made invisible, there is an option to make visible again via right click.

So, i see two options to see this question:

1- An option to hide the menubar in menubar, but ALWAYS must be an option to restore via right click
2- As the hide option may be a "power user" one, and confuse the user, make this option doesn't appear anyway. The only way to hide it would be via Ctrl+M

I prefer the second one. Give the user the option to hide it. By default it would be visible.

The option to hide the menubar, wouldn't be a global one: think koffice: i'd work with the menubar visible.

Thanks
Comment 11 Pino Toscano 2008-10-26 22:47:01 UTC
*** Bug 130933 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 12 FiNeX 2009-08-09 10:13:09 UTC
*** Bug 116409 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 FiNeX 2009-08-09 10:13:26 UTC
*** Bug 202389 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 14 FiNeX 2009-08-09 10:15:55 UTC
Bug #174944 adds some more considerations about hiding/showing the menu. I don't set it as dup because it considers a further use case.
Comment 15 FiNeX 2009-08-09 10:32:43 UTC
*** Bug 200177 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 16 Cédric Bellegarde 2009-10-16 15:55:23 UTC
With last qtcurve, you can hide menu bar for all Qt/Gtk apps with Ctrl+Alt+M.
Comment 17 Fri13 2010-09-04 10:06:07 UTC
The idea to hide menu just with Ctrl+M works very well. The option to have a context menu with "show menubar" when right clickin is annoing as it adds one entry to context menu.

Example Konqueror and Dolphin has this annoing way as it adds it to first choise to context menu. I use lots of context menu in Dolphin and I always keep Dolphin without menu. So the entry there is just taking space and adding to me a possibility to mistakenly press it as it is top of "Create new >".

So if wanted to do well, the "Show menubar" should be moved to top of "properties". In konqueror it should be then the last one. 

But best really would be a global setting in System Settings to enable the feature. Two options. To have just the Ctrl+M function or the Settings > Hide Menubar + Ctrl+M -function. And then have a setting to apply it by default to all applications so you do not need to press Ctrl+M everytime you start a application first time.

The Ctrl+M could as well be changed as Ctrl+Alt+M so there is no possibility by mistake to press it. The Amarok 2 looks better when menu hided. Amarok developers just should improve the GUI so you could get few important functions accessible without menu. Now only few menu entries takes so littlle actual space, but adds empty space and clutter the UI. Ctrl+M fixes that very well.

The future is UI's without menu. With customized toolbar, shortcuts and menubar.
Comment 18 Christophe Marin 2010-09-19 22:06:58 UTC
*** Bug 92524 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 19 Christoph Feck 2011-07-30 18:13:34 UTC
*** Bug 278867 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 20 Nate Graham 2020-09-29 21:38:07 UTC
Yes, this requires a bug report per app. :) There's nothing to do globally.