Hi, I'm also of the opinion that the current UI is confusing. This is with
the caveat that the first time I was confused by such fundamental design
motifs in user interface is probably my youth with Word 2007 and such. This
is to say that I grew up on and am familiar with the "windows-style" user
interfaces with a menu bar named File and such.
With this explained about me, here are the things I have found confusing:
what I perceive to be "multiple menus" in the top right. Many times I've
clicked through the hamburger menu thinking "man, I have no idea where
to find this thing," and then look through the docs and realize it's in
one of the other icons, which isn't even styled like a menu-opener
anyways! (From my windows-style point of view.)
As an interesting note, I think I would have been less confused
if you had even put the entire menu hierarchy into the hamburger
menu, such that expanding the hamburger menu essentially reveals
a windows-style taskbar. Shrug.
"multiple things" in the top left. This is slightly better, I've quickly
learned that the top left is pretty useless to me (as a long-time
software user, I've memorized the common mnemonic keyboard shortcuts C
for copy, O for open, and so on). But because of this shortcut, I've
only now (after reading these UI discussions) realized that these are
meant to be frequently-used actions. Previously, when I click on the top
left, I was scared a menu would jump out at me, and when I click on the
top right, I was scared a menu would not jump out at me! This is
possibly simply a fear that someone used to GTK would not have.
Let me additionally add some of my user stories from UI I believe to be good
(or I am at least familiar with).
I am "good at" VSCode. I am worse at
[photopea](https://www.photopea.com/). In both, I almost exclusively use
their features via command pallets! (except the most obvious ones like
clicking on the brush lets me use the brush, and the VSCode file
explorer functions like my file explorer.) I am aware there's a separate
discussion somewhere around here about that.
Observe Firefox. When I click on the extension menu, I am told it I am
looking at extensions. This teaches me that button is for the extension
menu. When I click on the downloads button, text says "show all
downloads." This teaches me this is something that lists downloads of
some kind. The hamburger menu has a very well-known idiom, and for every
other unlabeled button up there, that button teaches you what it is. I
had no idea what the three buttons that open menus (that aren't the
hamburger menu) are meant to show me until reading this forum, when I
realized that hovering over them for long enough shows me their names.
Perhaps emulating the Firefox extension menu and showing a bold title,
separator line, and then content would help?
Interestingly, I also don't use the Firefox main menu bar at all, and
whenever I have to open it, I am confused. (I didn't even know you could
print from it!) This corroborates #1243's peeve about it for Chrome. For
reference, I instead use the context-sensitive, more easily memorizable
way to do things. Do I want to inspect the source code? Either I keybind
to *I*nspect element, or right click on the area I want to inspect.
*P*rint? Keybind or webapp-provided button. New tab? Press the "+"
button that "adds" a new tab. The only items that I have remembered as
idiomatic for the menu button across different apps is the about section
and any settings.