GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 155771
Removal of computer/desktop/trash icons from desktop unintuitive
Last modified: 2012-09-19 21:59:41 UTC
For example: Removing the Wastebasket/Trash icon. The only reason I managed to find out how to get rid of it was looking at bugzilla. It would be much better if one could set default icon desktop preferences from a new dialogue box, or even just a right click and "Do not show Wastebasket".
users probably want to configure that once and to keep the configuration, have a menu entry for that all the time is probably not a good idea. An UI to change the common gconf settings is a good idea, there is some project about this, but that's not a nautilus issue. I'm closing this bug as NOTGNOME.
I disagree. Are you seriously suggesting that users should delve into the back-end configuration to do something that should be easily accessible? Is it so difficult to just add an option in the File Management Preferences window underneath the Wastebasket setting (where you configure the Wastebasket off anyway)? This is removing one of the major peeves for a lot of people, for very little effort?
GNOME makes choices to keep simple configuration dialogs, you can argue the same about all the gconf options. I'm not sure than the majority of users want to get rid of the trash icon on the desktop.
If only the trash link and/or the home link and/or the computer link is selected, shouldn't we provide a "Remove From Desktop" action for those instead of the delete action, displaying a dialog with instructions on how to restore them?
Bug 309081 suggests to bind the delete key to "empty trash", but some comments suggest that we also provide the icon removal functionality when pressing delete.
I wouldn't mind if you could hit delete and then be asked: Are you sure you want to permanently remove this icon from the desktop? [Cancel] [Remove] but this is the wrong time to providing additional informatoin about putting the Trash icon back later (and I'm reluctant to bother pointing out the Trash will not be emptied). Extra information only makes things more confusing and users will not remember the infromation or access it easily. We cannot do this until we have a clear way of adding the icon back later, it is safer to keep the icon permanent otherwise we risk creating a flood of Helpdesk questions about "how do I get my trash back?". I know Ubuntu uses the Trash Panel Applet, how do they handle users wanting to add a trash icon to the desktop if they handle it at all? I am increasingly thinking bug 309081 is a bad idea, at least the part about about using Delete. Using Delete combined with some other key to empty trash might still be workable.
Created attachment 49064 [details] [review] Proposed patch against HEAD I've also submitted this patch to the nautilus mailing list [1] for review. Alan: Is that terminology OK? [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2005-July/msg00138.html
eek! A typo (Remote).
Created attachment 49065 [details] [review] 49064: Proposed patch #2 against HEAD Corrected typo.
The patch is still not complete. It lacks integration with the delete action and displaying one dialog for the removal of multiple liks would be nice to have as well.
Also a good idea would be to bind the delete key to the unmount action on a volume icon. I think is a very intuitive action and dont need the user to know what "unmount" is.
FWIW, in OSX you have to press Cmd+E to umount a desktop icon, Delete doesn't work... I guess they usability tested it and decided that Delete could be confused with Format, or at least 'Delete everything on this volume'.
*** Bug 358355 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*ping*
These are now offered in the gnome tweak tool. I don't think it makes sense to put them in the nautilus preferences dialog.