GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 143853
Icons tend to overlap pile on the desktop
Last modified: 2005-02-02 10:07:16 UTC
Place many files on the Desktop, but leave some free space for new icons too. Order icons by name. Mount a removable disk or save another file. New icons appear over old ones in "piles" of 2-1000 icons and overlap instead of occupying nearest free patch. See screenshot.
Created attachment 28414 [details] Part of a desktop where some icons appear in wrong places.
I can confirm this.
I think there are two reasons for the overlapping. The first reason is that icons save their position. So, for example, if you plug a USB storage device and place its icon somewhere, Nautilus will remember the device's icon's position next time. If, then, you un-plug this media and plug another media, it will take the first available place, which could well be the place where the previous icon was. So, when you re-plug the former media, it will put its icon over the second media's icon. I hope it's clear enough :) A solution to this could be to *never* put an icon over an existing icon, even, if it's where the icon is supposed to appear. Instead, put the icon in the first available place, but keep in memory the position where the icon *should* have been put. Then, if the user moves the icon himself, save this new position as the new default position for this icon. The second reason for the overlapping is that, sometimes, there is just not enough space to put new files... A solution to (visually) replace all the overlapping icons with a virtual folder called "More icons". CLicking on it should show all the additional icons... Just tell me if that doesn't make sense.
May be a pulsating graphical arrow to scroll or page through the icons on the sesktop?
Or, even simpler, add scrollbars to the desktop ?
Thanks for the bug report. 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 45953 ***