Menu bar
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A menu bar is a
The menu bar's purpose is to supply a common housing for window- or application-specific menus which provide access to such functions as opening files, interacting with an application, or displaying help documentation or manuals. Menu bars are typically present in graphical user interfaces that display documents and representations of files in windows and windowing systems but menus can be used as well in command-line interface programs like text editors or file managers where drop-down menu is activated with a shortcut or combination key.
Implementations
Through the evolution of user interfaces, the menu bar has been implemented in different ways by different user interfaces and application programs.
Macintosh
In the
There is only one menu bar, so the application menus displayed are those of the application that is currently focused. Therefore, for example, if the System Preferences application is focused, its menus are in the menu bar, and if the user clicks on the Desktop which is a part of the Finder application, the menu bar will then display the Finder menus.
Apple experiments in GUI design for the
Even before the advent of the Macintosh, the universal graphical menu bar appeared in the Apple Lisa in 1983. It has been a feature of all versions of the Classic Mac OS since the first Macintosh was released in 1984, and is still used today in macOS.
Windows
The menu bar in Windows is usually anchored to the top of a window under the
Linux and UNIX
KDE and GNOME[2] allow users to turn Macintosh-style and Windows-style menu bars on and off. KDE can have both types in use at the same time.
The standard GNOME desktop uses a menu bar at the top of the screen, but this menu bar only contains Applications and System menus and status information (such as the time of day); individual programs have their own menu bars as well. The Unity desktop shell shipped with Ubuntu Linux from version 11.04 through 17.04 uses a Macintosh-style menu bar; however, it is hidden unless the mouse pointer hovers over it, similar to the Amiga example below. Starting with 17.10, it defaults to the GNOME desktop environment, using its menu bar.[3]
Other
Window manager menus in Linux are typically configurable by editing text files or using a desktop-environment-specific Control Panel applet.
Amiga
The Amiga used a menu-bar style similar to that of the Macintosh, with the exception that the machine's custom graphics chips allowed each program to have its own "screen", with its own resolution and colour settings, which could be dragged down to reveal the screens of other programs. The title/menu bar would typically sit at the top of the screen, and could be accessed by pressing the right mouse button, revealing the names of the various menus. When the right menu button was not pressed down, the menu/title bar would typically display the name of the program which owned the screen, and some other information such as the amount of memory used. When accessing menus with right mouse buttons pressed, one could select multiple menu entries by clicking the left mouse button, and when right mouse button was released, all actions selected in the menus would be performed in the order they were selected. This was known as multiselect.
The Workbench screen title bar would typically display the Workbench version and the amount of free
Keyboard shortcuts could be accessed by pressing the "right Amiga" key along with a normal alphanumeric key.[5] (Some early keyboards had a Commodore key to the left of the spacebar instead of a "left-Amiga" key.) The filled-in and hollowed-out designs, respectively, of the left- and right-Amiga (or Commodore and Amiga) keys are similar to the closed-Apple and open-Apple keys of later Apple II keyboards.
NeXTstep
The NeXTstep OS for the NeXT machines would display a "menu palette", by default at the top left of the screen. Clicking on the entries in the menu list would display submenus of the commands in the menu. The contents of the menu change depending on whether the user is "in" the Workspace Manager or an application. The menus and the sub-menus can easily be torn off and moved around the screen as individual palette windows.
Power users would often switch off the always-on menu, leaving it to be displayed at the mouse pointer's location when the right mouse button was pressed. The same implementation is used by
Atari TOS
The TOS operating system for the Atari ST would display menu bars at the top of the screen like Mac OS. Rather than being 'pulled-down' by holding the mouse button, the menu would appear as soon as the pointer was over its heading. This was done to get around an Apple patent on pull-down menus.
RISC OS
In RISC OS, clicking the middle button displays a menu list at the location of the mouse pointer. The RISC OS implementation of menus is similar to the context menus of other systems, except that menus will not close if the right mouse button is used to select a menu entry. This allows the user to implement or try out several settings before closing the menu.
Ease-of-use
In both Windows and Macintosh operating systems, in other similar desktop environments and in some applications, common functions are assigned keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Control-C or Command-C copies the current selection).
Microsoft-style bars are physically located in the same window as the content they are associated with. However, Bruce Tognazzini, former employee of Apple Inc. and Human–computer interaction professional, claims[6] that the Mac OS's menu bars can be accessed up to five times faster due to Fitts's law: because the menu bar lies on a screen edge, it effectively has an infinite height — Mac users can just "throw" their mouse pointers toward the top of the screen with the assurance that it will never overshoot the menu bar and disappear.
This assumes that the desired menu is currently enabled, however. If another application has "focus", the menu will belong to that application instead, requiring the user to check and see which menu is active before "throwing" the mouse, and often perform an extra step of focusing the desired application before using the menu, which is completely separate from the application it controls. The effectiveness of this technique is also reduced on larger screens or with low
Some applications, e.g.
See also
- IBM Common User Access – the standard that defined several aspects of menu layout commonly used by Windows and several Linux desktop environments today.
- Menu button– where a pop-up menu is beneath a button.
References
- ^ Hertzfeld, Andy. "Busy Being Born". Folklore.org. Retrieved 2023-10-15.
- ^ "Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting".
- ^ "Ubuntu 17.10 releases with GNOME, Kubernetes 1.8 & minimal base images". Ubuntu. Retrieved 2020-12-18.
- ^ Donner, Gregory S. "Release 3.0". Workbench Nostalgia: The history of the AmigaOS Graphic User Interface (GUI). Retrieved 2016-03-01.
- ISBN 0-201-57757-7. Retrieved 2016-03-01.
Use a Right-Amiga combination as the default keyboard shortcut for a menu item.
- ^ "About Tog". 17 November 2012.
- ^ "'Re: PROPOSAL: "Mac" menubar as default' - MARC".