GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 121606
Cannot invoke panel context menu when panel is full
Last modified: 2020-11-06 20:25:48 UTC
The panel's properties (incl. its orientation) can only be changed by right or middle clicking on an emtpy part of it. Hence if it's completely full of icons or other items, there's no way to set it properties or move it (except of removing some items). Why I think it's a critical bug: Create a top panel, with a Menu Bar ("Applications Actions") at its left side, followed by several icons, and then a lots of empty space. Drag it at its empty part with middle mouse and move to the left of the screen. As the "Applications Actions" menus cannot change their size, the panel will be 150-200 pixels wide (might depend on font size and language) and all icons are resized to this extremely huge size. Hence only 4-5 icons fit on the screen and no empty part of the panel remains visible. It was only one click to turn my good desktop into a quite unusable one, and there's no simple way to undo this move. (gnome 2.3.90)
If "Show hide buttons" is enabled as default, this problem can be solved.
The properties can also be changed with the following approach. Select your panel with the help of Ctrl+Alt+TAB and Ctrl+F10 pops the right click menu of the focussed panel, where you can go to the properties and change.
Refer to BUG 82642, which is relevent to this topic.
*** Bug 126410 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 309764 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The bug is still there. What about adding a 'Panel' submenu to a context menu of an applet (somewhere near 'Move' action, e.g.), that contains a panel context menu?
This bug is still present and very serious because you can easily perform an action (moving the panel to a shorter side of the screen) that cannot be undone the same way. Ctrl+(Alt+Tab, F10) is not an acceptible solution (even I couldn't do it right the first time; I didn't let go of Alt before hitting F10, so I ended up changing the virtual terminal away from X, which would baffle most users). When the panel is not expanded, there are little "grips" (not sure what to call them) on either side that allow access to the context menu. What about keeping those grips in expanded mode (and possibly enlarging them to make them more discoverable)?
*** Bug 515726 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Still an issue in 2.22
I find myself stuck with this problem. I cannot edit my panel because there is no free space on the panel, and the only way to make free space is to edit the panel, which as mentioned I cannot do. The ctrl+alt+tab work-around does not seem to work as it appears to do the same thing as alt+tab for me -- it only cycles between apps, skipping the panel. Is there an alternative work-around? This bug was reported 8 years ago. It seems like something that would be fairly common, and the effects are quite severe. What am I missing here that makes this bug non-critical?
Doh. Apparently that thing at the top of my screen which looks like the gnome-panel is actually the newfangled "unity panel", so I guess my problem is with a completely different piece of software. Sorry.
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