GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 342049
Window close should close, not quit
Last modified: 2008-06-30 08:48:25 UTC
From https://launchpad.net/bugs/38512 Summary: Clicking the close button in the window titlebar should be the same as choosing File -> Close -- it should "minimize" rhythmbox to the tray. Currently, clicking the window close button quits the application. ----- Reply from Sebastien Bacher at 2006-04-21 14:39:44 CDT: Thanks for your bug. The close button is supposed to close the application, that's a feature not a bug, I'm rejecting it since that's not a bug ----- Reply from Richard Laager at 2006-04-21 14:49:55 CDT: I disagree. Look at what Gaim does in the same situation. With rhythmbox, if I click minimize, it minimizes to the tray. If I click close, it quits. There is no way that I can see to minimize it to the tray from the application itself. I have to go up and hit the tray icon. This consequently means I can't use a keyboard shortcut to minimize it to the tray either, like I can with Gaim where the window close action is mapped to the minimize to tray behavior when the system tray plugin is active. ----- Reply from Sebastien Bacher at 2006-04-21 15:41:21 CDT: There is no way to make everybody happy on that. rhythmbox behaviour changed during 0.9.n versions and I complained upstream about closing button not closing the application, I'll not complain other way now ;) Feel free to go argue upstream directly though ----- Reply from Sebastien Bacher at 2006-04-21 15:43:49 CDT: note that Ctrl-W does minimize to the tray with the keyboard ----- Reply from Richard Laager at 2006-04-21 16:29:22 CDT: I'll look into Ctrl-W. However, if there is no way to make everyone happy and they're two legitimate viewpoints, then they need a pref. I know the rationale for keeping prefs down, and I support it, but this might be one of those cases. ----- Reply from Sebastien Bacher at 2006-04-22 05:40:33 CDT: having the behaviour changing between boxes and applications is just confusing, what is your issue with having the close button closing an application? ----- Reply from Richard Laager at 2006-04-22 15:05:04 CDT: Applications that have a tray icon are generally long-running. (Why else would they have the ability to minimize to tray?) Thus, the desired behavior when I close that window is that the application keep going. The desired behavior when I close other apps (say Firefox, GnuCash, OpenOffice.org, etc.) is that they close, as I'm done with them. Rhythmbox and Gaim are the two applications I use that have a corresponding system tray icon. I close applications with Alt-F4, which is, of course, my window manager's close window mapping. Having Ctrl-W in Rhythmbox minimize to tray achieves the desired effect, but there are two flaws: 1. It's a per-application setting. The window manager close functionality is consistent across apps. I can't map Alt-F4 to that menu item, can I (as it's already caught by the window manager)? 2. It's inconsistent. The menu item that Ctrl-W maps to is "Close", not "Minimize to Tray". Therefore, I expect the close button on the window to have the same effect as that menu item. The "X" on a window is not a "quit" application button, it's a "close window" button. If I click it on a dialog for an application, the application doesn't quit. That window goes away. Therefore, we already have a precedent for context-specific behavior of the close window button. ----- Reply from Sebastien Bacher at 2006-05-16 16:35:03 CDT: GNOME HIG should probably have a recommendation about that and application stick to it. Anyway having behaviour changing between distributions is not nice, better to argue upstream if you want to, we are not going to make a distribution specific patch for that and I'm not going upstream to argue on that because I prefer the current behaviour personnally Other information:
If anyone feel like debating this, please go and read the several month long debate on the mailing list first. I don't think Rhythmbox should minimise to tray by default. However at some point tray icon support should be turned into a (on by default?) plugin, which would have an option to override the close-button behaviour with the patc from bug 318629. Marking as a dupe of that bug. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 318629 ***
I think what's requested in this bug report shouldn't be implemented, but regardless, this isn't a duplicate of bug 318629. This report is asking for Rhythmbox's behavior to be changed, whereas 318629 is asking for a new option.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 158168 ***