GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 310288
Icon chooser used in launcher & drawer properties is not friendly
Last modified: 2010-10-02 09:27:38 UTC
Version details: 2.10.2-1mdk.rpm Distribution/Version: Mandriva Cooker 2006.0 Way to proceed: Right click the panel and choose "Add to panel". Choose "Custom application launcher". Press "Add". In the "Create launcher" window add all necessary entries and press "No icon". A window appears showing the icons in /usr/share/pixmaps. The path is shown at the top and a button "Browse" beside it. Press the button and browse to a directory within the "Home" directory that contains icons (and which have proper file permissions). Problem: If the directory is selected and clicked (or double clicked, depending upon user settings), all the icons in this directory are greyed out and cannot be selected. But: see (*) below. On the other hand, if the whole path to the desired icon is entered instead of the default "/usr/share/pixmaps", the icon is added to the new panel launcher. (*) On the other hamd if the same directory is selected and the button "Open" is pushed (in the lower right hand corner of the file selector dialogue) it does work. So the problem is that opening the directory by ordinary means doesn't work, only via the "open " button. IMHO that ought to be fixed. -- A similar situation occurs when right clicking an existing launcher and choosing "Properties" etc. further as above.
I have the same problem here on FreeBSD, you can see a screenshot of it. http://people.freebsd.org/~mezz/Screenshot.png I always get grey disable, no matter where I go in even in my home directory or 0777 image files. Same version, gnome-panel 2.10.2.
that's not a bug, you have to select a file and not a folder, you can browser with the fileselector and use the button to use the selected folder
That is not correct. The file selector can be used anywhere by clicking and entering, or double clicking on a directory and *then* selecting a file. That's what I want to be able to do here as well. But launching as described that does not work, only entering the directory via the "open" button works, and then you can select a file, not the former way. This is inconsistent with the normal operation in other situations of using the file selector, so you are wrong. Sorry, but I reopen the bug.
To add another confirmation of this. I am running FreeBSD Gnome Panel 2.10.2. Here's a screenshot: http://www.greenoceandesign.com/images/Screenshot.png For reference, I also use the deskutils/smeg Gnome menu editor port and the icon choosing dialog boxes work correctly.
> that's not a bug, you have to select a file and not a folder, you can browser > with the fileselector and use the button to use the selected folder That's our point, how can we select a file when it's disable? Take a look at the screenshot again.
The screenshot is right, you select a folder with the "Browse" dialog, then the files from this folder are listed by the "Browse icons" dialog and you can pick one. This is done this way because the fileselector has no image preview, it's not on the file picker mode but the folder mode.
I see your reasoning but it is user-unfriendly and counter-intuitive. Therefor bad design overall. But if you say it is in accordance with the HIG I will leave the bug closed, though unhappily. Ciao, =Dick Gevers=
that is different of your initial concern, it works but maybe that's not optimal. Reopening, updating the settings and the title.
Thanks!
> The screenshot is right, you select a folder with the "Browse" dialog, then > the files from this folder are listed by the "Browse icons" dialog and you can > pick one. This is done this way because the fileselector has no image preview, > it's not on the file picker mode but the folder mode. Ah, now it works to allow me change the icon. Ok, I understand now that we are supposed to pick folder to 'open' it then browser the icons to select it. I didn't expected that the behavior has changed from 2.10.1 and below to 2.10.2. It seems to be long way than what it's supposed to me if you already knew which file you want to use. The browser icons doesn't get refresh when I finished with select folder so I had to press enter key to get icons refresh/reload. It will be nice if you add allow select either folder or file, if selected folder then go back to browser icon. If seelected file then it's done.
cc Reinouts, because we discussed this exact same bug during GUADEC6. I think there is two different problems here : -file selector is used in directory mode, which is not very obvious for the user, because "Browse..." doesn't give enough information on what is expected from the user. -once a directory has been selected with the file chooser, the icon selector is not updated to display the content of the directory. There are several ways to solve this : -make sure icon view is updated when a new directory has been selected with filechooser, so icon view is consistent with user choice. -Change "Browse..." with "Select a folder containing icons.." or something similar. Another solution would be to use filechooser in file selection mode (not in folder selection mode), but it would probably require more changes in the icon selector too. Unfortunately, it is not possible to use file chooser to allow both file and directory selection.
Thanks Frederic. IMNSHO the icon chooser is an archaic piece of junk. We can do without it: pressing the icon button should simply bring up the icons folder (with Nautilus). The folder window might not have an OK button but we don't need that either: the icon will simply change instantly once an icon is selected in the nautilus folder. The launcher properties has a revert button in case the user liked the original choice better.
Seems to be an usability issue. Do the usability team agree ?
I'd very much prefer a new icon chooser...
Updating version, getting new reports about this problem.
I agree that alternative interfaces might be better. However, the first solution in Comment 11 seems like it would be fairly trivial from a coding perspective (although I am not familiar with the code involved), and it would make the need for a new interface less pressing.
The patch from bug #340478 fixes most of the issues with that widget
But is still not, what a usual (aka none-technical) expects ...
*** Bug 344164 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 350173 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 352841 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Updating summary.
*** Bug 455564 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
In case someone is interested and did not notice, I was not aware of this bug and made that 455564. Includes a quick mockup what a better icon chooser could look like, and couple small points about how it should perhaps behave.
*** Bug 470336 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 589427 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 568211 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 550553 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***