GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 398970
Issues with the new control center
Last modified: 2010-09-29 13:35:30 UTC
I have several issues with the new control center that replaces the system/administration and system/preferences main menu entries. - Cold start is too long, at least 5 seconds for me on an AMD 2800 + 510 MB, when before access to administration and preferences submenu were quasi instant ; - If control center window is resized to something reasonnable (800*600), only 10 items are displayed. That mean you have to scroll a lot to find something, if you don't want/like to use the find entry ; - When using the find entry, the list flickers at each character ; - Items are too big, caption and subcaption are often redundant : http://emmanuel.pacaud.free.fr/bugs/control-center/control-center-1.png - Captions are ellipsized, especially when the current language put important information at the end (Like in french). - Item size is fixed, that means you can have half of the item area unused : http://emmanuel.pacaud.free.fr/bugs/control-center/control-center-2.png - When hovering over items, it change its appearance to a button. Its weird, not consitant with the rest of the desktop (I expect a behaviour similar to nautilus, item hilight and hand mouse cursor) ; - Something more personnal, it's really very hard for me to search through items layed out on a grid. I tend to search column by column, instead of row by row. Something that's not easy to do with the current layout, because categories are ordered vertically, not horizontally. An alternative layout, with categories layed out horizontally would be nice. - When using the find entry, item view is refreshed in order to display only the result of the query. I think that's wrong, because it doesn't help you to memorize the position of the item. And that means each time you'll have to use the find entry, which implies to switch from mouse to keyboard, and back to mouse. That could be solved by trying hard to display all the items in the window (not scrollable), and just hilight the result of the query. http://emmanuel.pacaud.free.fr/bugs/control-center/control-center-find-mockup.png
As well, I think the search widget should have a broom icon to clear the input.
I have to say that the control center is unreadable for me as well. The linear menu was far simpler to search into than this oversized two-dimensional mess. Also, the "find" box looks both overkill and useless, because I don't know the exact words which will be used to describe a service (except that probably half of them contain the word "Manager" (or the horrible "Gestionnaire" in French)). Not to mention that aesthetically and ergonomically it feels completely awkward compared to other Gnome applications...
I'm pretty sure people who like the new control-center as is also like gnome-main-menu, and people who like the menu bar prefer the submenu hierarchy. So, why not keep the system/preferences submenus in gnome-menu bar. That would give us two consistent alternatives, the old menu bar with its hierarchical layout, and the new gnome-main-menu with the dialog approach. I really think it's too soon to deprecate the menu bar, or even alterate it with something that's not consistent with it. (And don't get me wrong, I like the work already done on gnome-main-menu and the new control-center, but they're not ready for me yet).
*** Bug 407625 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The icon size issue and redundant subcaption issues are fixed in the last control-center release. There's still no comment about the other issues. Perhaps I should split this bug entry in separate bugs ? Thanks for your work.
*** Bug 408960 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
It seems this bugreport isn't focused about one problem (issue), for example about keeping the system/preferences hierarchical submenus in gnome-menu bar (like in bug #40762), so why don't use separate bugreport for one of many issues, mentioned here? So, I think bug #40762 (revert so control center gnome-menu style or integrate capplets) shouldn't be a duplicate of this bugreport.
Sorry, I wrote incorrect bug number in my previous message. Bug #407625 (revert so control center gnome-menu style or integrate capplets) shouldn't be a duplicate of this bugreport.
If bug 407625 is not a duplicate, it would be either fixed (because we have (temporarily) reverted to menus by default, and you can switch between menus and shell with a menu editor), or wontfix. Doesn't make a difference either way. In addition, a number of the issues mentioned here are not actually control-center bugs, but belong to gnome-main-menu (that's where libslab lives). And I bet that for many of them, separate bugs already exist.
(In reply to comment #0) > I have several issues with the new control center that replaces the > system/administration and system/preferences main menu entries. The comments are about the new, rewritten, control-center for 3.0. > - Cold start is too long, at least 5 seconds for me on an AMD 2800 + 510 MB, > when before access to administration and preferences submenu were quasi instant It's much faster now. > - If control center window is resized to something reasonnable (800*600), only > 10 items are displayed. That mean you have to scroll a lot to find something, > if you don't want/like to use the find entry ; There's between 20 and 30 entries visible with the default window size now. > - When using the find entry, the list flickers at each character ; It doesn't flicker anymore. > - Items are too big, caption and subcaption are often redundant : The icons are now the default size, and the subcaptions hidden. > http://emmanuel.pacaud.free.fr/bugs/control-center/control-center-1.png > > - Captions are ellipsized, especially when the current language put important > information at the end (Like in french). Shouldn't happen anymore. > - Item size is fixed, that means you can have half of the item area unused : > > http://emmanuel.pacaud.free.fr/bugs/control-center/control-center-2.png Shouldn't happen anymore, and it would reflow when resized. > - When hovering over items, it change its appearance to a button. Its weird, > not consitant with the rest of the desktop (I expect a behaviour similar to > nautilus, item hilight and hand mouse cursor) ; It doesn't change appearance anymore. > - Something more personnal, it's really very hard for me to search through > items layed out on a grid. I tend to search column by column, instead of row by > row. Something that's not easy to do with the current layout, because > categories are ordered vertically, not horizontally. An alternative layout, > with categories layed out horizontally would be nice. The layout has been changed. > - When using the find entry, item view is refreshed in order to display only > the result of the query. I think that's wrong, because it doesn't help you to > memorize the position of the item. And that means each time you'll have to use > the find entry, which implies to switch from mouse to keyboard, and back to > mouse. That could be solved by trying hard to display all the items in the > window (not scrollable), and just hilight the result of the query. > > http://emmanuel.pacaud.free.fr/bugs/control-center/control-center-find-mockup.png I agree, filed as a separate bug 630903