GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 141900
Activate Show Desktop Button on DND hover
Last modified: 2005-01-18 06:40:59 UTC
Hovering pointer over Show Desktop Button during DND should activate it, similarly to the way it does with task list now. This idea could be probably extended on other UI elements, like Metacity "minimize" button, or maybe desktop switcher, dunno if it's sensible though.
I doubt its a good idea for random sites (which aren't even drop sites) to do random things as you drag something around ... Usability people: ?
Interesting idea, however I think Mark's remarks bring up a good point. This behaviour could get out of control when extended to lots of other UI elements. On just the 'Show Desktop' button I don't think this would get out of hand, the behaviour wouldn't complicate the button much and would provide users with a new way of getting to the desktop. Having this as the single point of action for this could be a solution to the 'I have lots of windows open and want drop this item in a folder off the Desktop (or the Desktop itself)' problem. I think we'd really have to test it out to know. Maciej, I'd love to work with you on a patch to the 'Show Desktop' button; I don't think it would be a difficult patch for you to write, maybe Mark could help you out with any snags you run into in the gnome-panel.
OK, I may try to do this. It'd be in wnck-applet, right? I agree that it may get out of hand, OTOH some judiciously chosen points could speed operations a lot. Particularly desktop switcher, I've seen many times new people assume that it's possible to use it for DnD (after they learned about switcher concept) and be suprised it's not actually the case. I'd also like it to be DnD sensitive, ATM it requires moving windows between desktops prior to dragging which is cumbersome.
I suppose this is harmless enough, but I'd be surprised if anyone ever discovers it exists (and if they do, it might give them unrealistic expectations about where else they can drag things, and then they'll be frustrated when they can't). IMHO it would be more useful (and discoverable) if a 'minimize all' happened while I was hovering over an empty area on the desktop-- but I guess that's basically just considering the desktop to be a spring loaded folder, so we can't do that :)
Created attachment 27761 [details] [review] Proposed patch
Please see also http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142649
What about this patch? Is it good enough to be accepted? Adding PATCH keyword, hopefully it will attract someone to review it :)
Microsoft Windows activates 'show desktop' if you drag something to an empty spot on the taskbar and hold it there. This is a pretty useful behavior and it probably won't be activated accidentally. I say include it.
Maciej: The patch looks clean code-wise. The rest is up to the maintainers. Thanks for your efforts!
Maciej: does it work? I tried it, but it did nothing.
(Sorry for the delay, but for long time my build was broken, and I had some issues with getting it back to work) Yes, applies cleanly and works fine for me, although I noticed small warning during compile, do you compile with -Wall -Werror? I'm actually quite surprised it's not enabled by default with jhbuild. I'll set it on and take care of warnings, cleaned up patch should follow shortly
Created attachment 34249 [details] [review] New patch without compilation warnings It's the same as previous one, with additional #include only to fix compiler warning
Comment on attachment 34249 [details] [review] New patch without compilation warnings I committed a slightly modified version.
Thanks
*** Bug 164407 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***