Windows: Investigate custom menu implementation

[bpasero]

To fix 35+ menu issues: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Amenu

[WaiSiuKei]

Hi @bpasero, you can implement the menu in JS in a Browserwindow and then rendering the workbench in a Webview.

[bpasero]

@WaiSiuKei why so complicated, the window can be frameless and own everything, including menu and title?

[WaiSiuKei]

Yes, the browserWindow can be frameless, with menu and title created by HTML. The reason is that when you click the menu, the activeElement of the webview will no change, only the webview itself will be blur, you can focus the webview back and send the actionId to webview just like the menu works now. The fous/blur issue is most concerned. An Opposite Example is ghedit , it inserts the menu before the workbench, but you will find that there is no copy/paste in the menu, it cannot impletement the functionality because the focus of editor is lost.

[bpasero]

Ah good point, needs more thinking indeed.

[sbatten]

Results of investigation with other applications. The goal of this investigation is to see if a custom menu bar will solve the problems/issues being reported to us by testing other applications that have gone this route. GitHub Desktop use a combined menu/title and an Atom Plugin provides a similar design. We use notepad as a baseline that uses a true native menu bar to compare.

Accessibility

Issue	GitHub Desktop	Atom Plugin	Notepad	Result
27106	Not Fixed	Fixed	Fixed	Fixed
25418	Fixed	Fixed	Not Fixed	Fixed
19011	Fixed	Fixed	Fixed	Fixed
17224	Not Fixed	Not Fixed	Not Fixed	Not Fixed
17180	Fixed	Not Fixed	Not Fixed	Fixed
17177	-	-	-	Fixable
17172	Partial	Fixed	Partial	Fixed
6140	Not Fixed	Partial	Fixed	Fixed
5556	-	-	-	Dupe of 27106
2945	-	-	-	Dupe of 1569
1569	Fixed	Fixed	Fixed	Fixed

Other Issues

Description	Link
Alt-Key conflicts with custom keybindings	41070, 35010, 22488
Support for Global App Menu in Gnome	36667
Support when clauses in MenuBar Actions	35225
Request for Custom Menu Bar	34719, 16363
Request for Custom Title Bar	29997
Chords and Shortcuts displayed differently	33677
Toggling Menu Bar causes issues	21889, 16487, 32853, 10941
Dynamic Menu Bar Contributions	21131, 22359, 16627
Localization	4771
Editor context-aware menus	991

[kizomanizo]

When will this issue get some love from the DEV's? it will really be easy to the eyes.

[PurpleGranite]

Good to see this in the June 2018 Iteration plan - Item 33677 listed above should however be listed as an Accessibility issue due to the impact that differential positioning, shading and screen reader accessibility caused by that item for sight-impaired developers.

[eamodio]

Loving the new custom menu's so far (minor issues aside) -- is the plan for them to be themable?

[sbatten]

@eamodio yes, as of this moment they are just light and dark, but theming is coming.

[MulverineX]

How do we use this, is it implemented in some pull request or update, because I'm on Insider builds and its not there, AFAIK. If its not released yet, how long until the update including this would at least come to insider.

[sbatten]

@MulverineX Thank you for your interest. It is not currently enabled by default, but you can enable on Insiders by setting window.titleBarStyle to custom

[sbatten]

This is enabled by default for Windows in Insiders and we intend to make it default for the stable release this milestone.