GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 158723
Please re-order menu options
Last modified: 2010-01-12 00:12:08 UTC
Most of the time when I (right-) click on the CD Player applet, I want to pause or un-pause it, but I have to scroll down to reach this option. I think the following order would work best: Play/Pause Previous Next Stop Eject Help About
This isn't the gnome applet, it's the notification icon for the cd player program. Thanks for the bug report, I'm reassigning the bug.
*** Bug 152838 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The current order of the menu options matches the layout of the CD Player which is pretty much dicatated by the standard layout of a real CD player. I can agree that this might not be the best idea the menu layout in computer program and I agree it would might make more sense to group, Next and Previous, and also Play/Pause and Stop. Play/Pause Stop --- Next Previous --- Eject --- Help About (Dont hold your breath but if I have time I might give it a try and put together a patch for this but it should be easy and it might be worth adding the gnome-love keyword to this bug report)
Created attachment 47333 [details] [review] patch to change order of context menu
I discussed this with a colleague and the Patch rearranges the menu order as suggested by the original reporter to Play/Pause Next Previous Stop Eject --- Help About Quit (although I couldn't figure out how add a separator exactly as I had wanted) I think I will need to file another report requesting keybindings like Ctrl+Q to Quit the CD Player and more.
Created attachment 47419 [details] [review] fixed up patch * add separator * fix up widget desensification after re-ordering * indenting fixes I changed to: play stop prev next eject --- etc. This is because I think stop belongs next to play. I also changed the main interface button display order to be the same as the popup menu button order.
Thanks for cleaning this up but I have a few small problems with your changes. I agree with the original reporter on the button order and there was no question about the main button layout but the context menu order should be different becuase it serves a different purpose, quick access to the most used functionality (and somewhat unfortunately stray menu items like About that had to be put somewhere). Sorry I didn't explain my reasons for the ordering I used more clearly in the first place, I should have explained it better. In any menu the Top is prime real estate (and the last item is also relatively easy to hit). In a context menu I think most used is the primary deciding factor and grouping is only a secondary consideration. I also have in mind this context menu is what is shown in the notification area. Play/Pause is likely the most frequently used action it definately belongs first we can all agree on that. I believe Next would be the next most frequently used item (to skip songs one doesn't like so much) and as Gnome CD Player has no repeat function so I find myself using Previous quite a lot to repeat my favourite tracks to help drown out the sound of the two ugly people kissing noisily just a few metres away from me. It might be worth running a straw poll with the people you work with, I did and was convinced to change my mind and accept the original suggestion was the best button order for the context menu. I'm going to add the usability maintainer to the CC list in the hope that we can get some other opinions. The main interface buttons are a different story altogether and I am reluctant to change their order, I'm confident the current layout is a good default (although I'm sure some would customise it if they could easily do so). Although the ordering is a little odd it does reasonably approxamate the layout of a real life CD Player, you'll notice XMMS uses a very similar layout (and it uses seperate buttons for Play and Pause, which incidentally the HIG asks for).
"Sorry I didn't explain my reasons for the ordering I used more clearly in the first place, I should have explained it better. In any menu the Top is prime real estate (and the last item is also relatively easy to hit). In a context menu I think most used is the primary deciding factor and grouping is only a secondary consideration. I also have in mind this context menu is what is shown in the notification area." I disagree. Although most-used should be on-top, there should be grouping. Also consider the right-click menu on the desktop/nautilus, etc. All options are grouped, since most people use the mouse to navigate anyway, so it makes little difference for speed... I consider this issue solved.
needs to be deferred until after the branch for 2.13
can someone get a HIG guy to comment on this ?
So, the HIG guidelines for right-click menus are here, although admittedly they're not super helpful in this case: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/menus-types.html#menu-type-popup I guess one difference from the proposals is that the first menu item ought to do whatever happens when you left-click the icon (or focus it and hit Space); after that, they should be grouped by likely task order or frequency of use, like any other menu. Unfortunately gnome-cd is just crashing for me at the moment so I can't see what it currently does, but I'm guessing something like: Bring to Front ------------ Play/Pause ------------ Next Track Previous Track ------------ Stop Eject might be about right. But that's just my personal frequency of use, of course, probably need more data really :/
Marking the patch needs-work since there's no consensus here.
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. vumeter, cddb, and gnome-cd have been removed since GNOME 2.28. They have long been abandonned, and it's now time to close your bug that will most probably never be fixed. By upgrading to a newer version of GNOME you could receive bug fixes and new functionality. You may need to upgrade your Linux distribution to obtain a newer version of GNOME.