One of the things I was able to do in SB+ was actually populate the app’s native menu bar. On macOS this is “free” in terms of screen real estate, on windows and Linux it is not. I notice there’s a trend on windows and Linux for apps not to have traditional menus anymore at all to save visual space. I could do this in SB+ too, and in fact I can then more efficiently use the “top bar” for eg the sync state and forward and backward navigation buttons as I do on macOS already.
My question to Linux and Windows users: do you ever use the native menu bar or would ok with ditching it to get more and better used screen real estate?
No, I don't really care about the menu bar, but I also don't feel like I'm in the need for more space. So I'm not sure what getting 'rid' of it would achieve realistically - at least on my screen the bar takes up fairly negligible space.
It might be worth having the menu bar as a toggle, and defaulting to having it off; then see if anyone minds?
Since on macOS native menus are not part of the window Chrome (they're eternally attached to the top of the screen), I can setup a custom top bar chrome UI fully under my control. Right now I combine the close/minimize/maximize buttons with < and > navigation buttons, space name, sync indicator and license state.
Here it is on Windows (Linux is similar) (there's no "sync light" here, but I inject that right of the action buttons when it's setup):
Here the native menus are part of the window itself. I can, in principle, take over the top bar too, but then I'd also have to have custom (non-native) implementations of the menu system, which I don't really want to do.
I've noticed that there's a trend on Windows, but I suppose on Linux too is actually not have "traditional" menus anymore at all — here's Chrome:
The "real" menu is then hidden behind a three-dotted menu.
I'm thinking it's not a good idea to "sync up" the mac and Windows/Linux behavior, take ownership of the top chrome and not show "native menus" at all.
Yes, GNOME and KDE both don't use traditional menus by default anymore. As long as there isn't any functionality that is accessible only from the menu bar, I would prefer if there was no menu bar.
Electron has been improving nicely on the Linux desktop integration front too. So, I would like it if we got these three on the Linux build:
What if would appear when pressing the Alt key like other applications like Firefox, etc.? Extra bonus is to have a Hide Menu Bar setting that can be toggled?
The thing is, if I opt in to handling this top/chrome bar myself, I'd either leave the menu out or have to custom implement a whole menu system. If I opt in to the native window chrome (as I've done so far on Win/Linux) enabling/disabling the menu is trivial. But then having it swap between custom chrome/native chrome by pressing Alt is probably not viable and having a toggle could be ok but honestly now I have two chrome handling cases to maintain.
If you try out the new Electron based Linux version the menu bar is gone there as well. I am fine with it as long as everything the menus allowed you to do before, you can still do with the command palette.
