GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 347886
»End Process« button in bad position
Last modified: 2013-08-01 19:23:43 UTC
The »End Process« button is located in the lower right corner of the application window. Gnome users are used to find there a button which closes the window (cf. the About and Preferences windows of gnome-system-monitor itself), so they might activate this button, thinking it will end/close the application window. So the »End Process« button should be moved to another location, e.g. into the upper right corner. It may even be renamed to »End Selected Process«, to make any confusion with a »Close Window« button impossible. Note that this possible confusion does not occur if the user thinks before acting, but mind that people do not always do so, and it's a good idea for software interfaces to stay out of the user's way.
It would probably be a good idea to have some new features around this button, which will then make it more obvious that the button is related to the currently selected process. My thoughts on this, instead of simply having an End Process button, we should include stop, continue and kill as we've got a whole row to fit things in there. While we're at it we could have a select process button which could allow the user to select with the mouse which window they'd like to operate on, this would then select the relevant process in the process list. All of these buttons should also have icons. Does this sound like it would solve your problem?
So what ? we'd have the menu, the contextual menu and buttons ?
Yeah, but these contextual features aren't obvious, users don't always try the right click button, and also adding the extra gui orientated feature for selecting the process by clicking. This is helpful to unfamiliar users.
That's why there's also a menu, no ? I have left the end process button only because this is an immediate feature for beginners. I don't think other buttons are really needed. If process won't term, we should ask the user about kill
*** Bug 599137 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
After the patch in bug 674949 has landed, the "End Process" could be moved besides the "Refresh" and "View" buttons, I think.
Created attachment 225694 [details] [review] Move the "End process" button besides the other buttons Now it's on a row on its own, wasting a lot of vertical space. At the same time, add a "linked" style class to the other two buttons and make them a bit nicer :)
(In reply to comment #7) > Created an attachment (id=225694) [details] [review] > Move the "End process" button besides the other buttons > > Now it's on a row on its own, wasting a lot of vertical space. > At the same time, add a "linked" style class to the other two > buttons and make them a bit nicer :) I have tried it, and it looks sort of strange to have the Load average label, end process button, refresh button and view menu in the same row, they are not related. Load average + (Refresh +View) are OK, as a row has a leading end and a trailing end. But the End process button (probably the most used button in the interface, but I think in any case used more than the refresh+view menu is in the middle, not a very intuitive place to look for it). I'd say leaving it below the process table should be ok as: * we should add a filter textbox to filter the processlist (bug 509787) which will use that vertical space anyway * the end process action has a confirmation dialog, reducing the chance of accidentally ending a process * without a process selected, the button is insensitive, making clicks only possible after a user click on the process list
What do you think? Any other ideas how the interface could be reorganized, now that we also have to count the refresh button and the view menu in the equation?
The end process button has been moved to the top bar, above the process list, thus I am marking this as fixed. This problem has been fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major software release. Thank you for your bug report.