Comment 9 for bug 733349

One functional regression of the global menu bar is that you can't minimize maximized applications that are showing a modal popup window. (eg run Synaptic maximized and while it is reloading or applying updates, you can't minimize it because the global menu bar shows the window control buttons for the progress window.) It would sure be useful to have the ability to minimize from the unity launcher instead, even if it were just via a right-click menu option.

Another use case for minimizing from the launcher is if I want to quickly check something in an application. eg if I'm working on something in libre office and I click on unity's Thunderbird icon to quickly check on the contents of an email I have open, I would much rather just click on the Thunderbird icon again to get back to libre office, instead of being forced to move the mouse around looking for Thunderbird's minimize buttons or for libre office's launcher application. Unity's current implementation results in slower (and more frustrating) workflow in this case, and for me, this is a use case I frequently encounter.