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Menu Bars
Overview
Each operating system has a menu bar system for working with applications. An application's menu bar contains menus with commands specific to that application.
Mac OS X and Windows XP take different approaches to the menu bar concept. OS X has a single menu bar that changes based on the application you're working in, while XP attaches a menu bar to each open window of each application. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages.
Mac OS X
OS X has a single, unified menu bar at the top of the screen.
The contents of the menu bar change to match the application that you're working in. For example, in the above screenshot, the Finder is the active application, so the menu bar displays the Finder's menus. To display a different application's menu strip, switch to that application (either by launching it, or bringing one of its windows to the front it it's already running).
OS X's approach has a number of advantages:
- Easy to locate (the menu bar is always located in the same place, regardless of where an application's window might be)
- Reduces screen clutter (you can only work in one application at a time, so showing a menu bar for each open application is unnecessary)
- Impossible to "overshoot" the menu bar (since it's fixed at the absolute top of the screen, you can't move "past" it with your mouse)
- Displays the name of the frontmost application
OS X's menu bar contains an application menu, which appears to the lelft of the "File" menu:
Word's application menu
In addition to displaying the name of the frontmost application, this menu contains commands that deal with the application as a whole, such as "Preferences," "Hide/Show," and "Quit."
The logic behind this design is to seperate application-based settings from window/file-based settings. The commands that are relevant to the application appear in their own menu; likewise, the commands that are relevant to the current window/file you have open appear in their own menu (hence, why it's called the "File" menu).
OS X's menu bar suffers from a few flaws, however. For example, under normal conditions, there is plenty of space in the menu bar for an application's menus and any menu extras you may have loaded:
But if an application has lots of menus, its menu strip may expand so far to the right that it begins covering up other items:
When this happens, the only way to access the hidden menu extras is to switch to another application with a smaller menu strip. This is a very poor design, especially considering that the purpose of menu extras is to provide access to system settings from anywhere in the system! If menu extras become inaccessible depending on the application that you're working in, then they serve almost no purpose.
Granted, this design flaw is not encountered often, but it is still a flaw. It's hard to believe that Apple couldn't implement a solution to this problem and decided simply to "hope" that developers wouldn't create applications with too many menus.
Another flaw of the single menu bar design is that it is not always clear which window a menu strip is "attached" to. This is compounded by the fact that OS X lets you hide windows of open applications without quitting the application itself. For example, let's say that you have a Finder window and a Safari window open. Close the Finder window, and this is what you'll see:
Because you haven't actually switched to Safari, the Finder is still the active application, even though it has no visible windows. At first glance, it may look like the menus in the menu bar apply to Safari, simply because that's the window that you see in front of you. This can lead to some confusion, as when you traverse the menus you won't find any commands specific to Safari. Upon closer inspection, you'll see that the menu bar still says "Finder," indicating that the Finder is the active application. Click on the Safari window to bring it to the front, and then the menu bar will display Safari's menu strip.
Windows XP
Windows XP attaches a menu bar to each open application or window.
There are two main advantages to this design:
- It's very clear to see which application a menu bar applies to
- You can jump to a menu of another application without having to switch to it first (because the act of clicking on the other menu bar will bring that application to the front)
Because menu bars are attached to their parent windows, their width is dependent upon the width of the window. If a window is too narrow to display all of its menus, XP adjusts for it in two different ways:
- The menu bar expands to a second row to display the remaining menu items:
- An arrow is added to the end of the menu bar to denote that there are more items. Click it, and a menu will pop up showing the remaining items.
It's unclear why some applications use one method while some use the other.
Windows' design is subject to a few flaws as well:
- No fixed place for an application's menu strip. Unless all of your windows are maximized, the menu bars in each application can basically be located anywhere on the screen. This can slow you down when looking for a menu item
- No way to close all the open windows of an application at once
Conclusion
OS X's and XP's differing approaches in this area show that there is no "correct" way to implement a menu bar system. Each system has both good and bad aspects:
Mac OS X
- Menu bar is easy to locate; can't "overshoot" with the cursor
- Screen clutter is reduced by only showing one menu bar at a time
- Displays the name of the active application
- Application menu provides a way to change application settings as a whole
- Large menu strips can obscure menu extras
- Menu bar detached from associated window can be confusing when the frontmost application has no open windows
Windows XP
- Very clear which menu bar goes with which window
- Jump to another application's menu in one click - no need to switch to the application first
- Application settings aren't in a defined location
- Menu bars' placement depends on placement of attached window
Mac OS X: 8
Windows XP: 7
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