GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 319491
Menu Bar applet ordered incorrectly on vertical panel
Last modified: 2020-11-06 20:22:22 UTC
When using a vertical panel on the left side of the screen, with a Menu Bar applet at the top of it, I would expect the items to be ordered, from top to bottom: <logo> Applications Places System. However, since the rotation is simply a 90o rotation ccw, it is in reverse order. Technically, this is correct. However, to offer the best usability, it should be the other way. A generic/nice solution for this that I have thought of is a flag to reorder the flow layout of a certain portion of a GTK widget graph. "reverse-order". Or something. This would make Start be End and End be Start for all widgets below the one it is specified on. This would allow the panel to instruct the widget to rotate ccw 90o and reverse order... which is much more appropiate for applets on a left side vertical panel. Other information:
Low priority, but would be nice. Patches welcome ;-)
*** Bug 316427 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 90951 [details] [review] Patch It turns out it's really easy to do. However, I'm mixed on this: it looks nice, but less logical to me. I'd love to get feedback from someone with more usability foo...
Vincent, I could try to give some usability feedback if you'd post a screenshot. If the change is obvious, and Applications is now in the upper-left corner when the sidebar is on the left, that's a usability win. That's because the Applications menu is no doubt more frequently used than the others, and Fitt's law says it should occupy the corner spot.
Well, the thing is: it might be good if it's in the upper left corner, but should we revert the order too for the lower left corner? And what about right vertical panels: should the order be reverted if it's in the bottom right panel? And what should be done when the menu bar is not in a corner of a vertical panel? Right now, there is some logic behind the current way it's done: it's always in the reading order.
I'm not sure what you mean. I have a test FC6 box running Gnome 2.16. If I drag the A-P-S panel to the top or bottom, the menus stay in the same order. If I drag it right, A is at the top right corner. If I drag it left, S is in the top left corner. To me, that's inconsistent with how the other panel positions are arranged, and contrary to Fitt's law. Oh, do you mean that some people might rearrange the contents of the panel so that the A-P-S menus appear in the opposite end of the panel? Well, there, you're changing conventions so much that there's less of an expectation for how it "should" work. You're right that there, if we follow Fitt's law, we have to do the reverse of reading order in some cases. I think that would be OK. I think it's a great rule to always keep A in the corner. It feels consistent even out of reading order. Imagine a day when A-P-S are replaced by icons; reading order wouldn't even occur as a consideration. When A-P-S is away from the corners, the reading order does become important. But my hunch is that users move the A-P-S menu within the panels are going to be few yet vocal. My suggestion is to fix this bug now however it's fixed, and wait for these folks to describe their own use cases and preferences (and post shots of their panels).
(In reply to comment #6) > Oh, do you mean that some people might rearrange the contents of the panel so > that the A-P-S menus appear in the opposite end of the panel? Well, there, > you're changing conventions so much that there's less of an expectation for how > it "should" work. Why are you changing conventions? There's no reason the menu bar has to be at the top of the screen. This is an important case too. Also, all other applets are in the reading order. Having the menubar being different is not consistent. A good example is the window list: if it gets rotated and you have two columns, you'll get this (with three windows): |Window 3| |Window 1|Window 2| and not this |Window 1|Window 2| |Window 3|
(In reply to comment #7) > Why are you changing conventions? There's no reason the menu bar has to be at > the top of the screen. This is an important case too. Maybe I didn't express myself clearly. Yes, I agree that's an important case. Without your patch, if I drag the panel that has the A-P-S menu to the bottom of the screen, the order of A-P-S does not change. That's exactly my point. However, without your patch, if you have the same panel containing the A-P-S menu on the left, the order of A-P-S is the *reverse* of what it is if the same panel is on the right. > Also, all other applets are in the reading order. Having the menubar being > different is not consistent. A good example is the window list: if it gets > rotated and you have two columns, you'll get this (with three windows): > > |Window 3| > |Window 1|Window 2| > > and not this > > |Window 1|Window 2| > |Window 3| You have a point. I'm not so worried about the order of windows in a rotated panel, because it's kind of arbitrary anyway. I mean that it changes from session to session depending on the order in which you start programs. It wouldn't occur to me to complain "gee, I rotated this panel and the order of windows doesn't seem right" (so long as they're all there!) My assumption is that people don't rotate their panels often, but that they find a decent arrangement and stick to it for a while. Therefore, we should worry less about whether a panel is consistent (with itself or whatever else) when just rotated, and more about how usable a panel is once it's in whatever position. As far as the applets... to me, there are two interesting categories: ones that are always displayed (e.g., launchers, clock, deskbar) and ones that show up and disappear (e.g., printer notification). The order of the latter doesn't matter as much as that of the former. The order of the launchers doesn't matter very much immediately after rotation, because they're easy to rearrange and they'll stay put. (I'd stick with whatever behavior the simplest code yields.) The more permanent applets (like the clock) should stay in Fitt's law order (not in reading order, because they are iconographic, not alphabetic). In other words, if a panel is like so on either top or bottom, |A-P-S|launchers| |notifications|deskbar|clock| then on rotation *either left or right*, I'd expect this: - A P S - launchers - - notifications - deskbar - clock - Here's a second example. This panel should never exist, |clock|deskbar|notifications| |launchers|A-P-S| because if A-P-S gets moved to the right-hand corner, it should become S-P-A! 'A' is the most frequently used of those three, and it should get precious corner space. But if we start out with |clock|deskbar|notifications| |launchers|S-P-A| then on rotation either left or right, I'd expect this: - clock - deskbar - notifications - - launchers - S P A -
Hrm. Thinking more about it, I think there are two cases: + the vertical panel that is a rotated panel + the vertical panel that is just a sidebar In the first case, you want the text to be rotated, and the reading order (which is bottom-to-top for left panels) is important. In the second case, you might prefer to use vertical non-rotated text and so the reading order always is top-to-bottom.
Sorry for being dense, but I'm so confused. What's the difference between those two cases? Why would reading order (in English) ever be bottom-to-top? And why would anybody want to read text sideways (i.e., not have it rotated)?
(In reply to comment #10) > Why would reading order (in English) ever be bottom-to-top? If the text is rotated, then the reading order of the text depends of the rotation angle. In the case of a left panel, it's bottom-to-top (of course, strictly speaking, you rotate your head too, and the reading order is still left-to-right). > And why would anybody want to read text sideways (i.e., not have it rotated)? I'm confused here :-) Care to elaborate?
Ah, OK. We were using "rotated" differently. I think a lot of the confusion here stems from the fact that we're working without a screenshot. Could you post one where your patch is applied? I understand your point about bottom-to-top reading order. So, using your definition of rotated -- I think that the A-P-S text should never be rotated (i18n aside). Consider this screenshot: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=90681 . Now imagine that on that screenshot, A-P-S is not on the top panel, but at the top of the left panel. Do you agree that it should be ordered A-P-S here?
Is this a dupe of bug 543913?
This is somewhat related to bug 543913. When I tried to reproduce 543913, the FUSA name text behaved differently from the text of the Date & Time applet. Note that the FUSA and D&T applets also behave differently depending on gnome-panel width when gnome-panel is vertical left or vertical right. Also, the FUSA pic is rotated separately from the FUSA text... In other words: bug 319491 and FUSA share one problem: instead of laying out (English) text horizontally in vertical panels, they lay it out vertically. In addition to that, FUSA has another problem with flipping text orientation, as described in bug 543913. In addition to that, FUSA has a problem with the FUSA pic being rotated independently of FUSA text. In addition to that, the Date & Time applet has a problem where the date and time are stacked in a vertical panel even when the width of the panel doesn't require it, i.e., this: | Wed Jul 23 | | 11:23 AM | instead of this: | Wed Jul 23 11:23 AM | (However, the Date & Time applet *correctly* stacks the date and time when the panel is horizontal and wide.) This comment is clearly related to multiple different bugs (only some of which might be filed; I haven't checked), but the larger point is that vertical panel and applet behavior is wrong in lots of corner cases.
*** Bug 538105 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Keeping the "Applications" menu and the gnome icon at the end of the menu should be the most important goal here. Currently the gnome menu gets buried into the middle of the vertical panel. This is opposite of how it looks in all other panel orientations. I feel strongly that it needs to be changed. Adding an option doesn't sound great, but I guess it could be hidden in gconf?
(In reply to comment #16) > Keeping the "Applications" menu and the gnome icon at the end of the menu > should be the most important goal here. > > Currently the gnome menu gets buried into the middle of the vertical panel. > This is opposite of how it looks in all other panel orientations. Well, if you put the menu bar at the bottom of a left panel, it's fine. And what to do if you put the menu bar in the middle? > I feel strongly that it needs to be changed. Adding an option doesn't sound > great, but I guess it could be hidden in gconf? I'd really like to avoid this... But maybe we want a setting to say that the panel is a sidebar or that it's a rotated panel (which are two different cases).
(In reply to comment #17) > Well, if you put the menu bar at the bottom of a left panel, it's fine. And > what to do if you put the menu bar in the middle? We need to switch the behavior for all cases when it is on the left side. Perhaps it helps to think of the menu items as individual items on the panel? If I lay out my panel on the bottom. [Icon] [(App menu) (Places menu) (System menu)] [Clock] If I move the panel to the left edge the ordering gets swizzled. [Icon] [(System Menu) (Places Menu) (App Menu)] [Clock] The App menu now moves next to the clock, where it was next to the icon before. Note that if the panel is then dragged to the right edge, the ordering switches again (although now it matches the top/bottom ordered panel)
Could work, although I'm still unsure. Want to play with it and do a patch so that we can try and "feel" it?
Any movement on this bug? In Ubuntu this bug is particularly noticeable because Ubuntu has prefixed the Applications item with the Ubuntu logo. It results in the logo being placed in the middle of the left-hand-side panel instead of up in the corner. The patch already attached to this bug is still solves the problem. There is also a bug in Ubuntu's bug tracker for this issue: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/558631
Ummm; ignore the bit about the logo in my previous comment. Upstream gnome of course has the logo too. /me puts on paper bag Regardless, I would like to know if a decision has been made on this issue. Thanks.
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