GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 385534
[Patch] Clear button for Control Center
Last modified: 2011-08-01 12:14:05 UTC
This patch replaces the search entry water mark in the application browser and the control center with a button that clears the entry. It was developed mainly to get rid of the search watermark for the gnome-control-center shell because it is not recognized by stock GNOME users, and to add some extra functionality instead. The clear button requires libsexy and is optional (build-time option: --with-libsexy); by default, the watermark code is used.
Created attachment 78300 [details] [review] The "Clear button for Control Center" patch
Created attachment 78301 [details] [review] The --with-libsexy option (gnome-control-center) This is actually no patch for gnome-main-menu, but for gnome-control-center's configure.in. To test the clear button, you will have to apply this patch to gnome-control-center and compile it with --with-libsexy.
Created attachment 78302 [details] The obligatory screenshot
It should be pointed out before these newfangled clear buttons spread further from evolution to other parts of the desktop, that they are a regression in terms of a11y, since they are not key-navigatable as far as I can see.
To solve the a11y issue, would it be possible to additionally provide a shortcut for clearing the entry? We could build that functionality right into libsexy.
Correct that: there already is a shortcut, CTRL-Backspace.
Created attachment 78361 [details] [review] The --with-libsexy option Adds the --with-libsexy option to gnome-main-menu.
Another issue with these buttons is that they are by designicon-only, which makes them harder to understand for people who have vision problems. There is no room for an additional label that explains it. This also greatly reduced the discoverability of any keyboard shortcut you add, since there is no place to display the shortcut (like we do with mnemonics by underlining, and with accels by showing them in menus).
What about a tooltip?
A tooltip sounds right. Anyway, this should be fixed in libsexy. Enough apps use this widget by now, so I don't think any a11y problems for the c-c shell count anymore.
This is obsolete as we now have the new "System Settings".