GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 158168
Rhythmbox should minimize to tray on Exit
Last modified: 2009-05-18 02:30:20 UTC
Usually, applications registered in the notification area system are not shutdown when you press their window close button, but they simply disappear in favor of the usage of their notification area icon. Rhythmbox exits when you press the window close button, wether a notification area is present or not. I could not find any recommended behavior in the GNOME documentation, nor in the freedesktop standards and drafts. I think a nice way of handling this would be to implement different behaviors for the close button when a notification area is present and when none is: - shutdown rhythmbox (or hide the window and stop playback) when no notification area is present, - hide the window (but continue playback) when a notification area is present. This is Debian bug http://bugs.debian.org/280924.
> Usually, applications registered in the notification area system are not shutdown when you press their window close button, but they simply disappear in favor of the usage of their notification area icon. This really depends on the app, muine also quits when you press the close button. Imo muine's behaviour (quit when pressing the close button, display a popup menu when you click on the tray icon, and put a "minimize to tray" menu entry in this popup menu) is better.
So I should use muine? ;) I think there should be an uniform behavior, and if users want apps to behave non-uniformely, I think a configuration option is necessary, something like "Close button docks Rhythmbox", or should this be on the minimize button?
*** Bug 161952 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
IMO, The close button should close the application, as it does with every other application. There must be a better way to make the minimize to the system-tray than clicking the close button. When you are finished using the application, and you just want to listen to music, the icon in the system-tray is a little bit 'out of the way'. Perhaps there should be a 'go to the system tray' button? I hate suggesting things that would clutter the UI though. :/
I think it should be consistent between apps. I'm not sure this is the best place to discuss this though, should I bring that to ddl? Or where are such things best discussed for GNOME? We might reach a consensus where some types of apps need to be shutdown, and other not. Or that some other behavior is to be implemented, such as clicking on the notification area to minimize the app.
I agree with the reporter of the bug -- the more intuitive approach would be to quit Rhythmbox by the notification area icon menu. In this type of applications (resident ones), the GUI is seperated from "core" -- the programme is expected to continue running even when its interface is closed.
*** Bug 165415 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Retitling bug, I found the title from bug #165415 clearer ;)
Christophe, Is this fixed in the mainline branch? This should probably not be unconfirmed. :-) sri
It's not, since I don't think rb should do that ;) If something is fixed in mainline wrt that, that will be bug #165713
I agree with the reporter. Much like gaim, it's a background program. Maybe the minimize-to-tray option could be enabled/disabled through a menu option rather than being on or off all the time.
And I disagree :) * Usually, an app quits when the window border close button is clicked. Consistency would be if _all_ applications follow this behaviour regardless of NA icons. * In my opinion a left-click on the notification area icon should minimise the associated window (well, it actually does for RB, as it does for gaim by comparison). Hence there is no need to "abuse" the close window button IMHO. Maybe a recommendation about that should be made in the Gnome HIG so that all apps can follow a consistent behaviour.
As an update, cvs now minimises to the tray when the close button is used. However there is still considerable debate about whether this is good or bad, as there are quite a few people (myself included) who would prefer that the close button quits RB.
I think of this issue every time I click the notification icon. I must say I never click on the Close button, I type hit Alt-F4, and moving the mouse to point precisely on the notification icon of RB is painful. The immediate benefit I see with the change you mention in CVS is that I'll be able to hit a familiar combination (Alt-F4) to minimize to notification area, and another familiar one to quit (^Q). FWIW, a new shortcut could also have been introduced instead of changing the behavior of the window close operation. The only other solution I see to the problem would be to add some kind of new window button when the window can disappear in a new way, but that wouldn't solve my "pointing with the mouse is painful" complaint.
So you are saying it's logical to click on a close button when you want to minimize the window, what about that "minimize" button then, should it close the app? ;) (I guess the main reason for not overriding it is that it's probably not easy to catch clicks on this button from rb). Fwiw, a muine-like behaviour (a "minimize to tray" entry in the tray menu) (with a new shortcut if people like it) sounds much better than the current mess to me (though it could be worse, gaim and rb are more or less consistent in behaviour atm, while muine behaves differently).
Currently the code somehow makes Alt-F4 not work, but that's just a bug. In terms of clicking on window decoration, I'd agree with Christophe - if I wanted to just hide the window I would have clicked the minimise button, rather than the close one. CVS also has a new menu item "Close (Ctrl-W)" which closes the window, without exiting.
Heh!! I never said I hit the close button, I said I never do! My main concern is that I am able to minimize easily without bringing the pointer to a small location, and that means a keyboard-shortcut to me. I also said I'm ok to make Alt-F4 minimize to NA, since we have ^Q to quit. When I originally reported this, I was comparing Rhythmbox' behavior with Gaim's, hence the suggestion to change the behavior of "close". I do agree that the minimize button might be fine.
« CVS also has a new menu item "Close (Ctrl-W)" which closes the window, without exiting. » Aaarg.... Why isn't it called "Hide main window" or something explicit ?
The close button in the window decorations are relative to *windows* and not to applications. It does not usually end applications when you click on it, unless the window you close is the last one of the application, or if it is the main window of the application. This is the case when you don't use notification icons. But when a notification icon is used, this icon become the main "window" of the app, since you explicitly want rhythmbox to run as a background service by activating it. Thus, when you close the playlist *window*, you mostly want it to be hidden and to continue playing your music. That'll be possible to recall it by clicking on the tray icon.
I think that the close button should hide the window, and not close RhythmBox, since this makes sense (to me at least!) for apps with notification icons. A compromise however, could be to make the minimise button hide the window, the idea being that the app is present in the notification area instead of the task bar.
This will be re-added as a plugin, once support for them lands (bug 330523).
There is a patch to add a plugin for this on bug 318629. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 318629 ***
Does the plugin exists to choose the close behaviour ?
This is not a duplicate of bug 318629. This bug is asking for Rhythmbox's behavior to be changed, whereas bug 318629 is asking for a new option to be introduced.
*** Bug 532313 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 342049 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 526237 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I agree with comment #13, This should be discussed in the HIG so that all the Desktop behaves equally IMHO
Emilio > The HIG is already clear about that : there's no such thing as "tray icon". This is a notification icon and should be used only temporarly to notify. See bug #317982 So it makes no sense (according to the HIG) for RB to have a tray icon, let alone to hide in the tray when the user quits the application.
this is done, no further correspondance will be entered into, have a nice day.