GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 706936
Classic mode: application title (in the app menu) is hard to read
Last modified: 2015-03-07 02:52:40 UTC
Created attachment 253327 [details] Screenshot from Fedora 19 As more and more applications are losing their title bars, the application name on the app menu is becoming more important. Currently, the only thing about it that is visually distinct from anything else on the top bar is that it's partially covered by an icon. This makes is difficult to read. I think that the name of the currently running application is important and should therefore be (a) easy to read and (b) somehow distinctive. The current solution is neither. See attached screenshot. Mac OS does this much better. The situation when the focused program is maximized on the secondary monitor is even worse to the point of being actively useless, but that's a different story.
I'm inclined to agree.
FWIW, non-classic mode is barely better. The color scheme is better with most icons, but it's really hard to read "Settings" as anything other than "XSettings". As a separate issue, if you half-maximize two side-by-side windows, it's not that obvious which one matches the app menu.
After the theme rework in 3.16, the application name no longer overlaps the icon.