I've received several bug reports from users asking about how to carry out a specific action (that lies in the AppMenu of a window). The reason for this is that the menu indicator (blue triangle pointing down with the default theme) gets hidden as soon as the window title becomes too long.

Conny has already filed a bug report about this some time ago:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5759

It has been closed as "WONTFIX" with the reason that the "title is of paramount importance". I fail to see where three characters at the end of the title would be more important than a visual indicator about the availability of the menu.

Users are not give a visual hint about the availability of an AppMenu when the title is too long, leading to bad usability, inconsistency (the absence of the blue arrow indicates "no app menu", but that's not true when the title is too long and a menu is available) and bogus bug reports ("how can I do X?" - "Click the app menu" - "Oh, I didn't realize there was one!").

To give you an example, this is how it currently looks like (note that the window in the screenshot DOES have an app menu):



And this is the suggested improvement (ellipsized title + menu indicator):



Please vote for the bug if you have experienced this yourself.

Agreed - it is more than a little inconsistent even though I've never actually noticed it before* - I always check for an app menu regardless.

* To be more precise I've never really acknowledged the existence of the blue arrow.

i agree, i voted for it and added some comments

didn't knew about the arrow menu eighter.
let alone if the arrow dissapears half the time.

While I do agree that the title of a window is of some importance (I remembers situations when I was pissed because it was cut off and the important part was at the end), I think

• it's even more important to see if there's menu available or not
• there's no difference between cutting the window title at character n or n-2. The bug was not about replacing the window title, was it?

But then again, it's a UI issue and their not good at that. Do I have to say "VKB"?

Additionally, long titles can be auto-scrollable (bad for performance, tho) or touch-scrollable (press-release, you get the menu; press-drag you scroll the title) if the title is that important. Consistent UI should be of top priority for the platform if it wants to appeal to any kind of non-niche market.

Bug resolutions like this are so depressing, yet what can be expected when the next version of Maemo comes with a brand new UI, so there is no point putting any more effort into polishing the current UI? If Maemo6 runs on the N900 then I'm sure we'll look back and forgive them for closing this bug, but if not...

This is the cycle that Nokia need to break. Build a UI and stick with it. Long term. Across several device generations - don't chop and change every year, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

I just hope we don't have to go through this same cr@p with Harmattan, if we do that really will be the end, no coming back for me.

/rant.