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by postexitus 463 days ago
Menu bar "orphaned" from application window is a feature - not a bug. It's intentionally in a fixed location on the screen so you can find it every time you look for it. (I am an original Amigan - Workbench had the same approach, but only visible when you right click - oh I miss my Amiga)

While Windows approach of attaching the menu bar to application window was popular for a while, I am now crying just looking at Chrome window and seeing no menu at all. I don't even mention Ribbon blasphemy.
2 comments
p_ing 463 days ago
> It's intentionally in a fixed location on the screen so you can find it every time you look for it.

Which is a disadvantage when working with multiple applications as it forces an application switch before you can access the menu, rather than in windows where if you have your app windows staggered, you can immediately click into the other application's menu.

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WillAdams 463 days ago
Isn't Windows click-to-focus?

AFAICT, it's not possible to directly access the menu, so it's still two steps:

- switch to the second app to bring it to the fore/make it active

- activate the menu

I find this faster on a Mac since the menu target is larger.

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p_ing 463 days ago
No, it is not click to focus, or rather, the menu click is the focus action. You can overlay an Explorer and Notepad window, for example, and with Explorer in the foreground, click on the File menu in Notepad which brings Notepad forward as well as display the File menu items.

Plus, your mouse travel is far less to get from the app (since it's part of the app) to the menu.

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WillAdams 463 days ago
This behaviour seems to be dependent on which toolkit an application was written in.
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seec 459 days ago
You think it's a feature, but the moment you have multiple monitors or multiple instances of an app it becomes a liability. There is not that much benefit to the menu bar, expect maybe using less space than the windows taskbar (but then you need a dock and need more horizontal space because you can't stack text).

It's all right and it's not significantly a problem that needs to change but it's far from the best or ideal.

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