You may not use the page menu a heck of a lot in Google Chrome. Most of the functions listed there are easily accessed via a hotkey or aimed at developers, so the average user isn't likely to utilize the menu all that often. The wrench menu, on the other hand, is where all our configuration options lie -- as well as things like the history, download, and extensions pages.

In truth, I barely notice the page menu is there. Why, they might as well just figure out some way to roll it in to the wrench menu and be done with it... And that's precisely what might happen.

In the Chromium nightly source code, a command line switch has been added to enable a new iteration of the wrench menu. When turned on (on Linux only right now), the page menu disappears and the additional options are rolled into the wrench menu.

The code revision ends with "Note how long the unified menu is." It's longer, obviously, but not distractingly so -- and I think it's a good trade-off. Visually, you're only looking at a couple pixels difference -- but the subtraction makes perfect sense for Google Chrome's minimal UI.

Hey, if your browser is going to boast the simplicity and intuitiveness of a unified address and search bar, why muck about with two separate application menus?

 

Unified menu coming to Google Chrome originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 08 Jun 2010 10:00:00 EST.