GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 102183
Icons in notification area don't scale or should use multiple rows
Last modified: 2020-11-06 20:20:48 UTC
The icons in the "notification area" applet don't scale to the size of the panel. With the panel size set to "large" (64 pixel?), the icons look faily silly... For me it's just a minor annoyance, but I would guess that it would be a real problem for someone with less than perfect eyesight.
*** Bug 102232 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
/me considers setting the severity to major. It's possible that people won't use the notification area because it won't look good on big panels.
Havoc: haven't looked at the code but something like panel_applet_set_flags (PANEL_APPLET (fish), PANEL_APPLET_EXPAND_MINOR); should do what you want
I'm not sure what the right behavior is; it's possible instead of scaling icons we should start displaying them in multiple rows. But then there are also accessibility issues.
My preference would be that the icons scale. I set my panel to "Large" wanting to make things bigger, not to pack more stuff in. This would make it consistent with others: playing with size settings and panels a bit, it seems the general behaviour is: + graphical things (icons, desktop pager, load meters) scale with the panel size. + text things (clock, window list) take their size from the font preferences, and may display multiple rows if there's enough room.
*** Bug 103220 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Re-assigning to gnome-panel-maint. Apologies for the spam.
Has this been resolved? PANEL_APPLET_EXPAND_MINOR seems to be set: http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gnome-panel/applets/notification_area/main.c?r1=1.8&r2=1.9 regs, Chris
I think the notification area itself re-sizes no problem but the icons don't re-size. Each icon needs to implement re-sizing itself. Take EggStatusIcon as an (incomplete) example. If someone can verify that, please close this bug and open up bugs against each icon that doesn't re-size.
Scaling does not work here, and i agree it should be possible due to the possibility of people having not good sight. But aranging icons in more than one line/column should be a possible option too, just for saving some of that valuable screen surface.
*** Bug 310231 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 109581 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Can't the notification area icons be SVG images? If so, what's the problem here?
Well ... I dont agree with #5 From Ralph: I use 48px panel because thus I can have 2 lines of launchers in quicklounge, 2 lines of docked windows in window list, a square 2x2 set of workspaces in workspaces chooser, and then have my panel rich and handy ... so why not 2 lines of notifiers in notifier applet ... I use a 1600x1200 res on a 21" sgi monitor on my main box and a 1400x1050 res on my laptop, in these resolutions having a 48px high panel is not a pain for the workspace, has it could be on lower res. I think both of these modes will ever have their's supporters ... Btw, quicklounge offers both of them, and has a rather "compatible looking" layout ... isn't there some ways of partial code merging ?
Ubuntu bug about that: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/34156 "t would be nice if the application icons shown in the Gnome systray would be arranged in rows when the panel size is big enough. If you size the panel for example to 75 pixels the application list gets 3 rows but the application icons in the systray stay arranged in one row - that's wasted horizontal space. That means they use more horizontal space than if they would be arranged in 2 or 3 rows like the applications in the application list applet. See attached screenshot. http://librarian.launchpad.net/1672820/gnome-panel-systray-unefficient-icon-arrangement.png In the screenshot the applications in the application list applet are shown in 3 rows. But the application icons in systray stay arranged in one row. It would be better if they would be arranged in 2 or 3 rows to save horizontal space if you have lots of systray icons."
FWIW, I've always wanted to see some sort of grid-based system for the whole panel: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2003-July/msg00235.html http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-November/msg00150.html It's fairly ridiculous that making your panel bigger actually gives you less usable space; this sort of approach would at least give you the option to split things over multiple rows.
Just found my old ASCII art rendition in fact... bug #53420.
5 months have passed since the last comment... Is the multi-row layout for notification area going to be implemented?
*** Bug 399034 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Another three months passed. Is this bug going to be resolved or the notification area will remain like now?
*** Bug 421888 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Please add this feature. Windows have been offering it for a long time and it is quite necessary to avoid ridicolously space wasting huge icons for notification items and especially applets (e.g. a 81x81 volume applet icon looks absurd).
I think people may need large icon for personnal reasons : - esthetics : I'm mostly concerned with the esthetic part of the problem since at present time i get icons of different sizes when i increase the size of the top panel (on Ubuntu Gusty beta). See my panel : Volume control button, deskbar button (applets), OOo icon and networkmanager icon (systray), although all bundled with Ubuntu, don't scale when i increase the size of my panel to 35 pixels http://bp1.blogger.com/_TWgeucLxjj0/RvVqtJ_ajdI/AAAAAAAAAkI/3eMczZx0E1s/s1600-h/tableau_de_bord_icones_disparates.png - usability : When i configure a system for someone who discover what a PC is, he always appreciates large icons since he's no used to use a mouse. I think also that it can be quite reassuring for him or her Besides, people may not want large icon for personnal reasons : - space saving : People may need to save space on their screens. They could prefer having the possibility to arrange icon in rows rather than increasing the icon size. In conclusion, users should have the choice ;-)
Any update to this issue?
joiining the req
I need this feature to. Please fix it.
The fact that a large panel -> very large icons is somewhat awkward. I'd love to be able to fit more icons on my netbook's screen, but really can't. Any alternative or work-around people are using?
Hey, that good'ol one feature request ... 6 years, 6 monthes, 6 days ... Evil wont fix. No joke, that would be greet one day if this one was fixed, anyway, thanks for your work, I'll still be a gnome user even without it ...
I too would like this bug to be solved. Right now I'm using a 48px high panel, and the space the notification area takes is ridiculous. I agree that the current method of scaling icons is good for accessibility, but it would be a good thing to let users choose the number of rows to use, with the default set to 1 so that accessibility is still possible.
*** Bug 590095 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
7 years... unbelievable... wouldn't that be enough?: panelsize: 48px textsize: 24px div(panelsize / textsize) = 2 -> 2 lines of icons with iconsize=textsize panelsize: 64px textsize: 16px div(panelsize / textsize) = 4 -> 4 lines of icons with iconsize=16px (textsize) panelsize: 48px textsize: 20px div(48px / 20px) = 2 -> 2 lines of icons with iconsize=20px wasted space 8 px 7 years without any progress not even as option, come on.
I also think this should be addressed. I have a friend looking forward migrating from Windows to Ubuntu and there is no way to setup the panel the way he is used to: He sets the panel on the left of the screen and then he expects the systray to be on a little place on the bottom, but instead the systray eats more than the 50% of the screen. That's not good. He wants something like this: http://twitpic.com/te89o But I can only get something like this: http://twitpic.com/tehyo
Thats really amazing.. there are still no solution for that... Very sad. Application icons in systray arrange in two row please... Thats very ugly -> http://www.hot.ee/alekokk/ugly_one.png
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