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Multiple Monitors.... multiple menu bars?
- Thread starter mrmacdude
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No, it wouldn't. It's a perfectly reasonable request. The placement of the menubar is the single greatest usability flaw in Mac OS X at the moment. As high-resolution screens and multiple monitors get more and more popular, it gets more and more ridiculous.
If I have a small little application open in the bottom-right corner of my second monitor, it makes no sense to make me move the cursor across both screens to get to the menubar. Replicating the menus on both screens would go very far in fixing this.
this topic has been beaten to death so bad, the Menedez brothers feel bad for it.
The Mac Fanboys will come out of the woodwork to tell you how the 1 menu bar is fine, and windows converts will tell you how they used UltraMon for the multiple taskbars and it was great.
Bottom line - may never happen.
Install DejaMenu to have a popup menubar appear at the cursor with a key combination.
Add SteerMouse or otherwise to assign a mouse button to this keypress.
(Preferably the middle mouse button, then you can feel like you're using RISC OS again *dreamy sigh*).
Anyone who's ever used ultramon in windows XP will absolutely tell you how much better it is to have a menu bar on each screen. You use applications in each screen, why wouldn't you want a menu bar on each screen?
Speaking of which, why in the world won't OS X remember which of my many screens I want my applications on? I have two monitors at work, I close my laptop and go home. When I open the same laptop (never shut down) the next day at work and plug in my monitor, it totally forgets where everything was, swaps some applications, hides others, its completely stupid. Every *single* day I have to spend time to move and reorganize the same applications to the same spot.
Apple is great at designing interfaces but man, when it comes to how they deal with multiple monitors they have REALLY dropped the ball. I'd give anything to have ultramon on os x.
Speaking of which, why in the world won't OS X remember which of my many screens I want my applications on? I have two monitors at work, I close my laptop and go home. When I open the same laptop (never shut down) the next day at work and plug in my monitor, it totally forgets where everything was, swaps some applications, hides others, its completely stupid. Every *single* day I have to spend time to move and reorganize the same applications to the same spot.
Apple is great at designing interfaces but man, when it comes to how they deal with multiple monitors they have REALLY dropped the ball. I'd give anything to have ultramon on os x.
OK now THAT is a classic line!
But I wonder how many people here remember or have ever even heard of them?
Now my memory isn't what it used to be, but that was only 19 years ago... well, on second thought, many in these forums weren't even born then, so you have a point!But I wonder how many people here remember or have ever even heard of them?
As far as the Menu Bar, I see it as a weakness on the Mac. If you want to have Safari on one screen, with the Menu Bar showing Safari controls, and have Microsoft Excel on another screen, with the Excel controls on that screen, you can't do it in native Mac OS X. You can do it with Windows, since the Menu Bar is attached to each application's window. It would be a pain to have to move the mouse from one screen to the other, just to perform basic functions, or to have to rearrange windows so the one you're most active with is on the screen with the Menu Bar. It's not a huge problem, but it is an annoyance that some would find frustrating.
In the same way that in Safari, you can "Move Tab to New Window", it would be great if you could have an option to move a particular application's Menu Bar to a new screen, or have a Menu Bar on each screen, with controls on the 2nd screen that relate to only the apps that appear on that screen.
Easy fix for this one. In Preferences choose display. Then click on Arrangement. Grab the little white menubar that is situated on the top of one of the blue monitor icons and drag it to the other blue monitor icon.
Voila - you've moved the menu bar
(Disclaimer, I already knew you could pick which window has the menu bar as I have customized my monitor setup how I like within the limits OSX will let me)
But, so, you have to open preferences everytime you decide to switch windows if you want the menu bar in the different window? That really doesn't sound any better than just dragging your mouse to the monitor that has the menu bar (in fact, it sounds like an even clunkier solution than just grinning and bearing it that the menu bar is only on one monitor... did you even bother to read the OP's complaint? It's not that he uses one monitor more, it's that he wants to be able to access the menu bar from whatever monitor he happens to be at the moment cause he switches a lot. I feel his pain cause I have the same issue. It's a minor annoyance but it is there and it would make my experience a lot better to be able to have two menu bars).
Just cause you like the OS doesn't mean you have to like everything about it or not admit that maybe there was a better way it could have done things.
Anyways, OP, not sure if this will work for you cause my setup is probably not like anyone else's due to the fact I don't have enough room on my desk to have my laptop side by side with my monitor so my laptop stays open in front of my monitor (and my monitor is big enough and sits high enough it still gives me a decent amount of usable room that isn't blocked by my laptop screen). So I put the menu bar on the laptop screen and placed the virtual screen alignments in preferences so the monitor sits on top of the laptop (basically to move my mouse to the monitor I move it up above the menu bar). That way the menu bar sits in the middle of everything so at least I'm not moving my mouse as much.
I know I'd be interested to hear why the heck Apple has no offered such a basic/simple solution all these years with multiple monitors. It's such a simple concept and yet Apple doggedly ignores it year after year, OS revision after OS revision. The fanboys who think it's fine as it is obviously don't use multiple monitors or they'd quickly see what a royal PITA it is to use a standard app on a 2nd monitor when the freaking menu bar for it is on the other monitor all the time (or vise-versa if you move the menu bar over). I can't believe Mountain Lion still doesn't address this.