http://www.extremetech.com/computing/115287-tired-of-drop-down-menus-here-comes-ubuntus-hud and http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/939 From the second link: "We’ll resurrect the (boring) old ways of displaying the menu in 12.04, in the app and in the panel. In the past few releases of Ubuntu, we’ve actively diminished the visual presence of menus in anticipation of this landing. That proved controversial. In our defence, in user testing, every user finds the menu in the panel, every time, and it’s obviously a cleaner presentation of the interface. But hiding the menu before we had the replacement was overly aggressive. If the HUD lands in 12.04 LTS, we hope you’ll find yourself using the menu less and less, and be glad to have it hidden when you are not using it. You’ll definitely have that option, alongside more traditional menu styles."
It's going to be a major problem for those who go ... I mean, you know, like, what's that thing called.
"I came up with the LCARS style in part because of Gene Roddenberry's directive that he wanted his new Enterprise to be so advanced that it looked simple and clean." Is that where this whole minimal appearance originated? Just in case, it's because one of the comments to MS' blog referred to Ubuntu going the LCARS way and I had to Google for it.
