GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 152862
panel drawer: option for list-style drawer
Last modified: 2011-03-29 04:51:45 UTC
Drawer needs some love on usability. Currently when opening a drawer, the user is presented with a set of icons without descriptions, which could lead to confusion. I suggest an option for the drawer to present its contents as a list, just like a regular menu [*] I'm placing some attached mock-ups. -- * and since we can embed drawers within drawers, that would effectively allow the user to construct a hierarchical menu
Created attachment 31630 [details] The drawer in its current form
Created attachment 31631 [details] The drawer with the new option turned on
And what should we do with applets in the drawer? It seems to me that your request is more like "add possibility to add user-configured menus to the panel". Which could be nice.
Some possibilities: 1. To go with the original suggestion, plus allowing applets mixed in the menu. That would mean that each drawer icon could be either just an icon, or a combination of icon + caption. Custom positioning would be respected for both applets and drawer items. 2. To go with the original suggestion, but not allowing applets. 3. To go with yours (Vincent) idea, and instead of changing the drawer, create another way of doing this. Either way I would be happy. Can't speak by Joe User though. Could he figure out any of this?
*** Bug 168064 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Why not solve it like this: launchers always show the title if it's in a vertical panel/drawer which is wide enough. Simple as that.
Created attachment 125325 [details] [review] A proof of concept for my proposed solution With this patch drawers will automatically show the names of the applications if the the drawer is wide enough (currently 128) as I proposed above. It's still rough on the edges but that could easily be fixed if the solution is approved. By the way, #168064 and #498335 seem to be duplicates of this one.
For GNOME 3, we removed the drawers from gnome-panel -- we believe they don't fit that well in GNOME 3, and there were always many issues (including usability issues) with them. We feel it's better this way.