Since I discovered the existence of global menu on Plasma, I’ve been searching for a version of Firefox that supports it. While I’ve found patches for it, I don’t know if it still works and have the patience to compile it.
Kudos if it’s in the AUR pre-compiled.
If you don’t know what global menu is it just moves the toolbar to any panel you want like in the attachment.
EDIT: Compiled firefox-globalmenu from the AUR, turns out it doesn’t work with wayland :(
What’s the appeal of the global menu?
I find it annoying as it’s far away from the window and you have to focus on the window before you can interact with the apps menu. Worst of all, it’s hard to tell which window /instance the current menu belongs to!
It’s for people who like the Malus aesthetic, regardless whether it’s ergonomic or not. If Malus does it, every competitor just has to in order to be able to say “we can do that too”.
My quick look at it:
- Plasma crash
- Autohide does not work with it because as soon as you move your mouse over a different menu point it closes again. Not seeing a point in having that thing constantly on screen.
Hard pass.
@gnawmon I gave up using global menu on any linux desktop environment long time ago. Sadly, many apps don’t handle it, and it’s not the same experience like in macOs.
What do you like about it in macOS? I have never used it, so it’s hard for me to understand the appeal.
In macOS it makes it very clear which application you’re in (if you momentarily forget), and you can get to menu items quickly (if you’re not already using the consistent key commands already) especially when using a Magic Trackpad (just swipe down fast and you’re there).
Whenever I have to deal with looking at Windows, application windows look super clunky and it’s definitely not helped by windows duplicating inconsistent menus everywhere.
Have you seen Safari on macOS? Other browsers have to settle for hiding everything under a hamburger menu or gear icon, making the inconsistent non-native UI problem more apparent.
@mearce You are used to windows being either Maximized or Fullscreen, and these two states being very different things, and changing from one to the other being an hassle, especially exiting from Fullscreen requires touching the keyboard (ESC or f11), or a special button in the interface, hoping the developer made it recognisable. In reality, they are the same thing, with the only difference that Fullscreen hides the menus. If you have the global menu attached to a menu that avoids maximized windows you have unified Fullscreen and Maximized. If on the same panel you also put a widget tonexit from maximized, you also have a universal way to exist from Fullscreen: just take the cursor to the top of the screen and reveal the panel.
I think openSuse maintains a fork with patched global menu?
The firefox fork for Garuda Linux afaik has global menu support. Check out Fire dragon.
