GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 751377
Refine and focus the system status menu
Last modified: 2015-08-20 12:02:05 UTC
The layout of the system status menu has been bothering me for some time. There are wide expanses of whitespace between related items, a lack of balance and rhythm, and the positioning of the round buttons is awkward. The main cause of these issues is the use of two labels for each submenu, one on the left and one on the right. This creates an uneven rag down the center of the menu, and makes the menu very wide. These issues can be resolved by removing the first (left-justified) label for each submenu, along with the separator between the user menu and the rest of the submenus. Mockup: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/shell/system-menu/simplified-system-menu.png Not only would these changes improve the layout of the menu, but they would also remove a lot of visual noise: often, the first of the two text labels is superfluous. You don't need something to say "battery" next to the battery icon, for example.
We now have some more detailed designs for this bug. Details can be found here: https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/SystemStatus/#Guidelines And these are the latest mockups: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/shell/system-menu/system-status-menu.png Moving from to one label per submenu means that quite a few of the status texts will have to be updated. The table on the design page contains suggestions for this. Also, I've deliberately left the treatment of the avatar image open. However, I would like to try and minimise the inconsistency between this and the other status icons in the menu, possibly by reducing its size or trying to get away without a border (at least when the default avatar icon is used).
(In reply to Allan Day from comment #1) > Also, I've deliberately left the treatment of the avatar image open. > However, I would like to try and minimise the inconsistency between this and > the other status icons in the menu, possibly by reducing its size or trying > to get away without a border (at least when the default avatar icon is used). Maybe we should just always use the symbolic default icon? As far as I can see, individual icons are useful to quickly differentiate users, which is the case on the login screen or the accounts panel, but doesn't apply here.
I think it's kind of a bit rude to not show the user their icon. We show it in password prompts and other global dialogs, too. Everywhere we show the user their name, we put their icon.
(In reply to Jasper St. Pierre from comment #3) > I think it's kind of a bit rude to not show the user their icon. We show it > in password prompts and other global dialogs, too. Everywhere we show the > user their name, we put their icon. I'd be happy to try either approach, and see how it looks in practice.
Created attachment 309710 [details] [review] status: Refine system status menu * switch to a one-column layout (and adjust strings/widths accordingly * remove separator before system menu * add link to account settings to user submenu for consistency Ran this by the design team at Guadec and worked out the remaining details with Allan over the last couple of days, so just attaching for reference.
Attachment 309710 [details] pushed as fa0e54e - status: Refine system status menu