I dislike the “advanced” menu. I guess I like ‘basic’ - the advanced menu might look a bit more ‘modern’, but I don’t think is better or more useful at all.
You’ll find it isn’t as good as you might think.
I understand what you mean. Heck, it feels a little unstable sometimes.
For anyone who wants the basic menu, the GNOME 2 mode is still available. And honestly, I don’t see much (or any) difference between the 2 styles right now.
For the Redmond style, using the advanced MATE menu is the better option because it’s closer to the modern Windows Start menu. Some would see the basic menu as a downgrade or inferior.
What do you use the menu for?
I never used it.
I open all my application with Albert quick launcher mapped to the shortcut Ctrl + Space. Faster and more convenient for me.
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What do you use the menu for?
For general users, they are more familiar searching with the menu.
I see. Still, I cannot imagine anything easier than a quick launcher that allows you to just simply type in what you are looking for and launch it with a single press on your return key.
People can be woefully inefficient, especially if they have been taught the most inefficient means of performing a task. I use CMD and direct filepaths myself in Windows but that’s not everyone’s jam.
That’s the strength Ubuntu has; oftentimes people don’t know the most efficient way, and though those dependent on GUIs lose a little bit of time per action, some users would lose a whole lot more time trying to do things a “Superior” way. So there are a variety of interfaces and interface configurations to suit everyone’s style, from basic launcher to the most fancy of buttons.
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I would love to use the Advanced menu. But it doesn’t have an icon that scales, so it looks ridiculous on my 64 pixel panel… I guess I should file a bug report or something, I just don’t understand nobody has ever noticed it.
Sorry, right after posting this, I thought, I can just pick an icon manually, and so I did. I don’t know how to get the default back. What was its location?
I show /usr/share/mate-menu/icons/mate-logo.svg
Since SVG is a vector graphic and scaleable, it looks like it sizes for the font that would be there. I assumed you removed menu text leaving only the icon? This is my 17.04 VM in that condition.
EDIT: And here it is upper left.
Indeed, I leave the text empty, but the scalable icon doesn’t scale up to 64x64 pixels, which I find strange. It seems a 48x48 would scale…!? (Why is that, is that a bug?) I haven’t found a larger Mate icon, so I use something else that’s 64x64.
Yep, I see. Technically a 64x64 PNG works at real size - a 128x128 PNG shows what I mean. The problem seems to be undesired handling, specifically, of SVG icons.
I say undesired because it may be that way by design. But this is inconsistent with bitmap (like PNG) icons.
In case anyone wonders: SVG = Scalable Vector Graphics
Note that the standard menu icon doesn’t scale either with the panel vertical size. Neither do indicators, running applications on the window list, or hide-to-taskbar icons. It seems to be an exclusive behaviour of only a small number of applets. I’d posit the idea that those are the ones having an inconsistent behaviour.
On the other hand, having icons scale automatically to the panel size is one of those undesirable features for many setups, particularly on vertical panels, because of the space lost on a direction that has a premium value on modern monitors.
I do prefer the idea of setting my own icon sizes manually, by replacing icon files, or through any preferences if there are any. Besides it better matches the desirable pattern of a configurable desktop. On that aspect, the advanced menu does it right.
My main criticism of the advanced menu boils down to this: Non configurable font size and color and doesn’t support the icon separators set on the Edit Menu configuration.
The first problem affects the menu size tremendously. For large menus it becomes ugly and unwieldy. It also negates completely any value in being able to change the menu background colour. The second problem affects large menus too, because they are generally (as is my case) organized into subgroups by placing groups of related icons between separators which facilitates quick visual location of the icon I want to click.
But it is right that this is not a long list. Now, I may do what @tiox suggests on his post and look for the schema files myself and try and alter them. That may deal with the first problem. But always stroke me as annoying that the preferences allow you to change the background colour of the menu and no one thought this would necessarily mean users also needed to change the font colour. And that for a Desktop Environment that prides itself of supporting low-end machines, no one thought that low-end monitors with small resolutions tend to accompany them. And all this on a menu called “advanced”. So I just ignored it.
AFAIK all of the files are held in /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mint_menu. Might be wrong but eh. least you know where the plugins folder is where system_management.py handles the bottom left and places.py handles top left.
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Thank you @tiox. The menu seems to be a python/gtk application. The folder seems to actually be /usr/lib/mate-menu. The .py file there indicates the glade files are at /usr/share/mate-menu.
From there I took a cursory look at both the .py and glade files (also on the plugins folder), but is hopeless. I don’t know GTK programming and I couldn’t find any reference to fonts anywhere. Each entry on the menu seems to actually be a button class. But I can’t find where it is styled. More likely, there’s no support code for font size and colour and these two attributes depend entirely on the desktop theme, forcing me to change fonts globally. Which is not acceptable.
Maybe I’m mistaken, I don’t really know. I could investigate further… but honestly, I just don’t care enough. I’m a bit bummed by this so-called “advanced” menu. Interestingly enough this is a spin-off of the Mint Menu on Cinnamon, which has the exact same problem.
Spin-off from Cinnamon? Excuse me it’s a spin-off from Mint MATE. Mint Cinnamon’s default menu feels more like KDE’s.
Mint MATE, yes. Not Cinnamon.
I should know, being as previous mint user. It’s more than just a spin-off, it’s a complete rip! While I am less perturbed about the removal of the software manager button from system_management.py than I use to be, I would still like a software manager that functioned as a competent package manager as well. (think blending Mint’s software manager with Synaptic’s functionality.)
Different user types have different needs. Some are very text oriented. Use the keyboard mostly. and remember the names of every program and command as text. Other are visual types. Their programs need a mouse or graphical input. They do not have their hands on the keyboard already. An extra step for them. They may not remember the name of every program. “was it vid or avid or…?”
The Advanced menu has the benefit of Favourites. So you “put” things deliberately there, to:
a) Speed. Start them with a single click. If you had type part of the name, that is already multiple interactions.
b) See and Remember things. You will immediately see them. It’s a useful reminder to do something or what the app is called. You don’t stumble across something with “search”. Browse is an important part of behviour.
The Advanced menu also (like Basic) has “Categories”. 2 clicks to “see” all your, say, Audio programs.
The Advanced menu has Search too. To keep everybody happy. And help you if you know the name, but don’t know where the app is.
Having a choice of menus an launchers, means Ubuntu Mate can appeal to a broader set of users.
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