Put the menubar in the titlebar or have a deducated menubutton on the left side (not default hamburger)

[developer91234]

It's bad usability to shove the full menubar into a hamburger, especially if the hamburger is in the right corner. Gnome doesn't recommend putting huge menu hierarchies into the hamburger, though they also don't propose much of an alternative. One could keep the hamburger for a few elementary actions (shortcuts, help etc) but the full menubar should be its own thing and should not be crippled by trying to shoehorn it into a design that's intended for barebones utility and content consumption applications. And it often fails even for those - I've used Chrome for over a decade and that bloated hamburger menu remains a usablity nightmare that I will never get to used to.

I think either a full menubar in the titlebar like VS Code, or a dedicated (preferably rectangular so it's easier to click) "Menu" button on the left would be better. As a bonus, it would also help serve as a roadmap for other GTK apps to move to a more modern CSD style in a way that makes sense and without needlessly crippling the UI.

[cameronwhite]

Indeed, there isn't much of an alternative proposed by the Gnome guidelines, at least when I last read through it. IIRC, libadwaita's ApplicationWindow class doesn't support having a normal full menubar since it's designed for header bars instead.

[JaneSmith]

I love the new UI coming with 3.0. I am so excited for it! :)

Personally, regarding the question of menubars vs hamburger menus... in my opinion, the best solution is neither. The best way to handle exposing many functions to users in software like this, is via a searchable command palette. Some great examples of this are Dune 3D (a CAD program) and the old Plotinus GNOME extension.

Simply put, you press a button, and an overlay appears showing you a list of available actions, along with their keyboard shortcuts (so you can memorise them). This list of actions is ideally context-sensitive, so unlike a traditional menu bar, it only shows you the actions that are actually relevant for you at the time. The list is quickly searchable, so you can type what you want and it will find it for you immediately. Type "blu" and suggestions for gaussian blur might appear, for example. That's the best way to go.

[cameronwhite]

That is a very good suggestion to think about for a future version, especially since it can be hard to find specific effects from nested menus even when there is a regular non-hamburger menubar.

[JaneSmith]

I'm glad you think so. I included some example clips above from the old Plotinus extension because they were easily grabbable from their GitHub page — but I think the app Dune 3D might be worth taking a look at, as it's using GTK4 and being actively maintained, so it might be a better reference. Here's how it looks in Dune 3D:

Spacebar just brings up this context-aware command palette, and it appears near the mouse cursor for quick access. Very handy and makes it a breeze to interact with the program.