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Bug 102183 - Icons in notification area don't scale or should use multiple rows
Icons in notification area don't scale or should use multiple rows
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: gnome-panel
Classification: Other
Component: notification area
2.26.x
Other other
: High normal
: ---
Assigned To: Panel Maintainers
Panel Maintainers
: 103220 109581 310231 399034 421888 590095 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2002-12-29 22:55 UTC by Ralph Loader
Modified: 2020-11-06 20:20 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Ralph Loader 2002-12-29 22:55:14 UTC
The icons in the "notification area" applet don't scale to the size of the
panel.  With the panel size set to "large" (64 pixel?), the icons look
faily silly...

For me it's just a minor annoyance, but I would guess that it would be a
real problem for someone with less than perfect eyesight.
Comment 1 Mark McLoughlin 2003-01-01 20:05:37 UTC
*** Bug 102232 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 2 Vincent Untz 2003-01-02 16:28:25 UTC
/me considers setting the severity to major.
It's possible that people won't use the notification area because it
won't look good on big panels.
Comment 3 Mark McLoughlin 2003-01-06 05:49:07 UTC
Havoc: haven't looked at the code but something like

        panel_applet_set_flags (PANEL_APPLET (fish),
                                PANEL_APPLET_EXPAND_MINOR);

should do what you want
Comment 4 Havoc Pennington 2003-01-11 23:36:38 UTC
I'm not sure what the right behavior is; it's possible instead of
scaling icons we should start displaying them in multiple rows. 
But then there are also accessibility issues.
Comment 5 Ralph Loader 2003-01-12 00:53:47 UTC
My preference would be that the icons scale.  I set my panel to
"Large" wanting to make things bigger, not to pack more stuff in.

This would make it consistent with others:  playing with size settings
and panels a bit, it seems the general behaviour is:

+ graphical things (icons, desktop pager, load meters) scale with the
panel size.

+ text things (clock, window list) take their size from the font
preferences, and may display multiple rows if there's enough room.
Comment 6 Vincent Untz 2003-01-13 20:50:29 UTC
*** Bug 103220 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Mark McLoughlin 2004-02-04 10:03:25 UTC
Re-assigning to gnome-panel-maint. Apologies for the spam.
Comment 8 Christian Neumair 2004-06-08 11:30:56 UTC
Has this been resolved? PANEL_APPLET_EXPAND_MINOR seems to be set:
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gnome-panel/applets/notification_area/main.c?r1=1.8&r2=1.9

regs,
 Chris
Comment 9 Mark McLoughlin 2004-06-09 12:22:43 UTC
I think the notification area itself re-sizes no problem but the icons don't
re-size.

Each icon needs to implement re-sizing itself. Take EggStatusIcon as an
(incomplete) example.

If someone can verify that, please close this bug and open up bugs against each
icon that doesn't re-size.
Comment 10 Sven J. 2005-03-20 22:19:26 UTC
Scaling does not work here, and i agree it should be possible due to the
possibility of people having not good sight.

But aranging icons in more than one line/column should be a possible option too,
just for saving some of that valuable screen surface.
Comment 11 Vincent Untz 2005-09-16 15:42:10 UTC
*** Bug 310231 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 12 Vincent Untz 2005-09-16 15:42:32 UTC
*** Bug 109581 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 David (djst) Tenser 2005-10-09 23:31:40 UTC
Can't the notification area icons be SVG images? If so, what's the problem here?
Comment 14 Olivier Giroire 2005-10-11 09:07:42 UTC
   Well ... I dont agree with #5 From Ralph: I use 48px panel because thus I can
have 2 lines of launchers in quicklounge, 2 lines of docked windows in window
list, a square 2x2 set of workspaces in workspaces chooser, and then have my
panel rich and handy ... so why not 2 lines of notifiers in notifier applet ... 
   I use a 1600x1200 res on a 21" sgi monitor on my main box and a 1400x1050 res
on my laptop, in these resolutions having a 48px high panel is not a pain for
the workspace, has it could be on lower res. I think both of these modes will
ever have their's supporters ... Btw, quicklounge offers both of them, and has a
rather "compatible looking" layout ... isn't there some ways of partial code
merging ?
Comment 15 Sebastien Bacher 2006-03-17 10:32:41 UTC
Ubuntu bug about that: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/34156

"t would be nice if the application icons shown in the Gnome systray would be
arranged in rows when the panel size is big enough.

If you size the panel for example to 75 pixels the application list gets 3 rows
but the application icons in the systray stay arranged in one row - that's wasted horizontal space.

That means they use more horizontal space than if they would be arranged in 2
or 3 rows like the applications in the application list applet.

See attached screenshot.

http://librarian.launchpad.net/1672820/gnome-panel-systray-unefficient-icon-arrangement.png
In the screenshot the applications in the application list applet are shown in 3 rows.

But the application icons in systray stay arranged in one row. It would be
better if they would be arranged in 2 or 3 rows to save horizontal space if you have lots of systray icons."
Comment 16 Calum Benson 2006-06-13 16:40:51 UTC
FWIW, I've always wanted to see some sort of grid-based system for the whole panel:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2003-July/msg00235.html
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-November/msg00150.html

It's fairly ridiculous that making your panel bigger actually gives you less usable space; this sort of approach would at least give you the option to split things over multiple rows.
Comment 17 Calum Benson 2006-06-16 16:32:01 UTC
Just found my old ASCII art rendition in fact... bug #53420.
Comment 18 Shogun 2006-12-29 10:47:58 UTC
5 months have passed since the last comment...
Is the multi-row layout for notification area going to be implemented?
Comment 19 Vincent Untz 2007-02-17 19:02:23 UTC
*** Bug 399034 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 20 Shogun 2007-03-21 09:53:21 UTC
Another three months passed.
Is this bug going to be resolved or the notification area will remain like now?
Comment 21 Vincent Untz 2007-05-14 14:40:47 UTC
*** Bug 421888 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 22 Luca Barbieri 2007-09-23 03:55:43 UTC
Please add this feature.

Windows have been offering it for a long time and it is quite necessary to avoid ridicolously space wasting huge icons for notification items and especially applets (e.g. a 81x81 volume applet icon looks absurd).
Comment 23 antistress 2007-09-29 21:13:42 UTC
I think people may need large icon for personnal reasons :

- esthetics : I'm mostly concerned with the esthetic part of the problem since at present time i get icons of different sizes when i increase the size of the top panel (on Ubuntu Gusty beta). See my panel : Volume control button, deskbar button (applets), OOo icon and networkmanager icon (systray), although all bundled with Ubuntu, don't scale when i increase the size of my panel to 35 pixels http://bp1.blogger.com/_TWgeucLxjj0/RvVqtJ_ajdI/AAAAAAAAAkI/3eMczZx0E1s/s1600-h/tableau_de_bord_icones_disparates.png

- usability : When i configure a system for someone who discover what a PC is, he  always appreciates large icons since he's no used to use a mouse. I think also that it can be quite reassuring for him or her

Besides, people may not want large icon for personnal reasons :

- space saving : People may need to save space on their screens. They could prefer having the possibility to arrange icon in rows rather than increasing the icon size.

In conclusion, users should have the choice ;-)
Comment 24 Shogun 2008-07-29 17:30:41 UTC
Any update to this issue?
Comment 25 mail 2009-04-10 09:33:26 UTC
joiining the req
Comment 26 Pius 2009-06-01 14:30:37 UTC
I need this feature to. Please fix it.
Comment 27 Jeremy Nickurak 2009-06-11 21:36:51 UTC
The fact that a large panel -> very large icons is somewhat awkward. I'd love to be able to fit more icons on my netbook's screen, but really can't.

Any alternative or work-around people are using?
Comment 28 Olivier Giroire 2009-07-05 22:15:12 UTC
Hey, that good'ol one feature request ...

6 years, 6 monthes, 6 days ... Evil wont fix.

No joke, that would be greet one day if this one was fixed, anyway, thanks for your work, I'll still be a gnome user even without it ...
Comment 29 Fabrice Gabolde 2009-07-13 21:29:57 UTC
I too would like this bug to be solved. Right now I'm using a 48px high panel, and the space the notification area takes is ridiculous.

I agree that the current method of scaling icons is good for accessibility, but it would be a good thing to let users choose the number of rows to use, with the default set to 1 so that accessibility is still possible.
Comment 30 Philip Withnall 2009-07-29 17:05:45 UTC
*** Bug 590095 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 31 Haru 2009-08-11 00:51:02 UTC
7 years... unbelievable...


wouldn't that be enough?:

panelsize: 48px
textsize: 24px

div(panelsize / textsize) = 2 -> 2 lines of icons with iconsize=textsize

panelsize: 64px
textsize: 16px

div(panelsize / textsize) = 4 -> 4 lines of icons with iconsize=16px (textsize)

panelsize: 48px
textsize: 20px

div(48px / 20px) = 2 -> 2 lines of icons with iconsize=20px wasted space 8 px


7 years without any progress not even as option, come on.
Comment 32 Jorge Suárez 2009-12-13 21:47:03 UTC
I also think this should be addressed. 

I have a friend looking forward migrating from Windows to Ubuntu and there is no way to setup the panel the way he is used to: He sets the panel on the left of the screen and then he expects the systray to be on a little place on the bottom, but instead the systray eats more than the 50% of the screen. That's not good.

He wants something like this: http://twitpic.com/te89o
But I can only get something like this: http://twitpic.com/tehyo
Comment 33 gaido 2010-09-14 20:23:18 UTC
Thats really amazing.. there are still no solution for that...
Very sad. Application icons in systray arrange in two row please...

Thats very ugly -> http://www.hot.ee/alekokk/ugly_one.png
Comment 34 André Klapper 2020-11-06 20:20:48 UTC
bugzilla.gnome.org is being replaced by gitlab.gnome.org. We are closing all old bug reports in Bugzilla which have not seen updates for many years.

If you can still reproduce this issue in a currently supported version of GNOME (currently that would be 3.38), then please feel free to report it at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-panel/-/issues/

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry it could not be fixed.