GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 772017
Application launcher unusable with touchpad
Last modified: 2016-09-26 22:22:05 UTC
Issue Description: When trying to page the application launcher via use of a touchpad scroll, it is almost impossible to scroll just one page. This appears to be because the scroll is reliant on "one click" of a mouse wheel or similar. Unfortunately because touchpads provide such a small surface area, it is rather difficult to accurately scroll just *one click*. The problem is exacerbated the smaller a touchpad is and the more pages there are in the application launcher. Proposed Solution: There are a few solutions possible for this; 1: Make scrolling proportional reliant on a user defined number of "scroll lines" - meaning, the user has to scroll their touchpad a certain amount before the page changes. 2: Scroll by icon row - this may be more intuitive to use, and also retain the current behaviour somewhat. The behaviour being that the user scrolls *one click* and the application launcher scrolls one row per scroll *click*. 3: Implement free-scrolling, basically the same behaviour as seen when using an application folder within the launcher. Options 2-3 may be much easier to implement, with option 2 possibly being the more natural behaviour a user would expect when using a mouse wheel. Option 3 may feel more natural when using a touchpad, and is how an Android device scrolls, depending on the launcher used. The ideal solution would be to have an option for page/row/free scrolling - perhaps available as a right-click context menu when right-clicking a blank spot within the launcher.
Thanks for taking the time to report this. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 707973 ***