Menubar on Windows???

Eric Chatonet eric.chatonet at sosmartsoftware.com
Tue Dec 11 11:38:10 EST 2007


Hi Xaxier,

I do agree.
When I came to Windows (without leaving the Mac: I work with since  
more than twenty years), I did not like the menus 'in' the windows.
Question of habit ;-)
But I have to say that, with large screens we have now, it's seems  
more appropriate...
Actually, I build sophisticated applications without menus but  
toolbars (at the top of the window) AND contextual menus that appear  
more intuitive for more advanced users: hierarchy in the way to  
access provided functions sounds to me as an ergonomic rule.

Letting this apart, Richard explanation is, as usual, complete and  
clear :-)
One way to avoid problems is to begin a project with Win32 and just  
setting the menu bar group using the menu builder then switch to Mac...

Le 11 déc. 07 à 16:50, xavier.bury at clearstream.com a écrit :

> Hi Richard,
>
> While the idea of a floating menubar is really nice (and so NeXT  
> like!),
> it does pose a few problems on windows:
>
> - win32 task bar object - rev here is a nightmare - click on one  
> and the
> menubar still stays behind/hidden for example...
> - If you hide the application, dont forget to hide the menu - but  
> maybe
> that's not wanted but maybe yes other times
> - submarining the menu as you mentioned - but sometimes it is the  
> other
> way around. And there's a bug in RR where the palettes are  
> submarined by
> the normal stacks (fixed in 2.9?)
> - it's not standard and most windows users hate separate menus (as  
> far as
> i've heard and seen them moan)
> - a separate menu steals more desktop real-estate than an included  
> menu
>
> There's reasons why it could be cool but when you are used to menus  
> being
> always on top of the window, you dont have to look for them.
> The same goes for a Mac user who sees their window while the menu of
> another application (which is active with no [overlapping] windows) is
> visible...
>
> just my two revcents...
> ---------------------=---------------------
> Xavier Bury
>
> use-revolution-bounces at lists.runrev.com wrote on 11/12/2007 16:36:57:
>
>> Dave wrote:
>>> This is what I don't understand. How to I set the "menu group" on
>>> Windows? I can (and have set it and it works ok on Mac). I have a
>>> Menubar group in a stack called "MenuBar" how can I use this menubar
>>> group as the menu bar for the current stack under Windows?
>>
>>  From the Rev Dictionary entry for "menubar":
>>
>>     On Mac OS systems, when a stack's menubar property is set,
>>     the stack is scrolled and resized on Mac OS systems so that
>>     the group is not visible in the stack window. (On Unix and
>>     Windows systems, this is not necessary, since the menu bar
>>     is normally displayed in the window.)
>>
>> On Windows (and pretty every other OS but Mac), the convention is the
>> have menus at the top of the window.  Only Mac detaches them to  
>> have a
>> separate menu bar at the top of the monitor.  To facilitate this, the
>> menuBar property of a stack defines a group in a stack which will be
>> automatically scrolled out of view when run on OS X, but will  
>> appear in
>> place on all other systems.
>>
>> While contrary to convention, it's possible to have a menu bar on
>> Windows which is separate from the stack.  In fact, Rev does this,  
>> and
>> one of the products we develop here does also (though we're in the
>> process of redesigning it to adhere to convention in the next  
>> version).
>>
>> To have a separate menu bar on Windows just build the menu group in a
>> separate stack and open it as palette so that it doesn't get  
>> covered by
>> the other windows in your application.
>>
>> If your other windows are resizable you can also adjust the
>> windowBoundingRect property to account for your menubar stack, so
>> zooming won't submarine the top of the document below the menu stack.
>>
>> -- 
>>   Richard Gaskin
>>   Managing Editor, revJournal

Best regards from Paris,
Eric Chatonet.
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