Bug 211978

Summary: Combining title and main menu bars
Product: [Plasma] kwin Reporter: KDE Brainstorm Submissions <brainstorm>
Component: generalAssignee: KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE    
Severity: wishlist    
Priority: VLO    
Version: 4.3.2   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: Mockup of combined menu bar and title bar

Description KDE Brainstorm Submissions 2009-10-26 21:06:42 UTC 
Version:            (using KDE 4.3.2)
Installed from:    I Don't Know

I use a "very portable" 12.1" widescreen laptop. With only 800 pixels screen height I'm always on the lookout for ways to shrink things up vertically. One thing that stands out to me is the title bar. Both the title bar and the menu bar often have significant amounts of unused horizontal space. I.e. the set of menu titles rarely fills the width of the window and the application title and window decorations are also typically well spaced.

This leads to the suggestion: can the contents of the window title bar and the main menu bar be packed into a single "top bar". This bar would, for example, have the window icon (window menu) on the left, followed immediately (left to right) by the application menu then on the far right the traditional minimise, maxmise and close decorations. The title text is omited but appears anyway in the task-bar, task switcher etc. The new combined top bar occupies the same space as the existing menu bar but keeps all the basic window manager funcions available.

I'm aware there are other solutions such as putting the title bar on the side of the window rather than the top, or removing window borders and title altogerther but I personally find that less intuitive or unfairly restrictive (I don't need to run everything full-screen).

like this...

See attachment for mockup.



This feature request was originally submitted through KDE Brainstorm, and has been submitted to Bugzilla due to popular demand. Original idea: http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php?mode=idea&i=61999
Comment 1 KDE Brainstorm Submissions 2009-10-26 21:08:14 UTC 
Created attachment 37855 [details]
Mockup of combined menu bar and title bar
Comment 2 Martin Flöser 2009-10-30 16:00:28 UTC 
The mockup illustrates the problems I see with this idea quite nicely: where to put the window title. If I take the menu and the title of this konqueror window and try to fit it into my 1280 pixel titlebar it would not fit. So where to cut? What is more important? Title or menu?

Then there are of course some technical problems (compare Mac Style menubar): the menubar would have to be xembedded into the titlebar. For the problems of xembedd please talk to the Plasma devs about Systray ;-) And like with the mac menubar we would have the problem that it only works with KDE applications.

This is a nice idea but I doubt that it works in reality. I think it would be more important to bring back the Mac style menubar and provide a nice plasmoid so that it can be embedded into a plasma panel.
Comment 3 Martin Flöser 2011-03-20 14:36:57 UTC 

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 266596 ***