My favorite new feature in the KDE Plasma workspaces 4.10 (to be released on February, 6th) is the ability to hide an application menu inside the window decoration. I’m someone who is hardly using the menu, I get too lost in it. I’m preferring to use tool bars with the nice icons which help me to recognize what I’m looking for (a scissor is easier to recognize than “Cut” or “Ausschneiden” – depending on the language the app thinks to have to use).

By removing the window menu the complete window frame gets less cluttered. A huge area containing lots of text is just gone. Just look at this screen shot of Calligra Words, which I use to write this blog post:

While KDE Plasma workspaces does not only allow to have the menu in the window decoration it also provides the possibility to put it into a global menu bar. Personally I do not like this (have used Mac OS, know what I’m talking about) as it disconnects the menu from the window. With the window decoration this problem does not exist and also removes the problem of long mouse distance travels in case of non-maximized windows.

In 4.10 we provide this new feature only in the Oxygen (default) window decoration. But our 4.11 development branch has seen some activity in this area: all Aurorae themes support it and also the Laptop window decoration.

This pretty awesome new feature can be enabled in System Settings. Just go to “Application Appearance”, then to “Style”, select the second tab called “Fine Tuning”. If your system provides the required support libraries (if not complain to your distribution) you will find there a section “Menubar” with a dropdown to select the way you want to have it. If you select “Title bar button” the button will be added automatically. As screen shots say more than words:

And last but not least a screenshot with the menu: