GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 267787
Preferences too large for small screens
Last modified: 2012-10-31 16:34:57 UTC
Please fill in this template when reporting a bug, unless you know what you are doing. Description of Problem: There are various problems with Evolution when running with a screen resolution of 800x600. I'm assuming GNOME default panel setup of two panels, top & bottom at 24 pixels high each, allowing for 552 pixels for Evolution and the windowmanager title bar. Specific problems: (i) Tools->Settings dialog is too big; problem appears to be in the "Mail Preferences"->"General" tab. (ii) Component selection buttons take up far too much space (have I missed an option to have just icons? should this be connected to the global desktop Menu/Toolbar icon setting) (iii) Actions menu doesn't fit on screen without scrolling (iv) New->Appointment is slightly too large to fit in default size, fits on maximimisation (v) Ditto for New->Meeting, for New->All Day Meeting (vi) New->Contact doesn't fit at all (too tall, buttons overlap each other on maximisation)
(I also set the desktop toolbar preferences to be Icons Only, which helped, but this was before finding the various issues listed above)
Now that I am using 800x600 on my desktop machine in Bangalore, I completely understand and sympathize with this problem. :) I'd like to add that the first time configuration wizard is utterly unusable at this resolution. I was reduced to pressing tab over and over again and trying to count how many of the hidden widgets I was cycling through to figure out when I had the "Forward" button focused. Ugh!
*** bug 271188 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Moving this to 2.3. We're going to look at changing several things in 2.3 that should help with this problem.
ok, and what about 640x480 then (bug 230976)? ;-p
*** bug 208030 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
adding dependency
in order to destroy the UI component (as discussed with jpr, dobey, and nags), changing component and reassigning. adding usability keyword. developers, please reassign appropriately if necessary. retargetting.
ah, yeah, keyword
removing old target milestone.
Should we make an 800x600 resolution tracker bug? Or are all these bugs actually talking about the same window? (Bug 350932, bug 239706, bug 244429, bug 267787, and bug 262546?)
*** Bug 472853 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 474714 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Window ok: Write new mail, Read mail. Window not ok: Inbox, User-Choises (Brukervalg in Norwegian, Shift+Ctrl+S).
*** Bug 482948 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 487258 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 488181 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 488212 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 489320 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 493402 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 498183 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 501593 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 501810 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 501923 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 503298 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 518365 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Bumping version to a stable release.
*** Bug 524947 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 532070 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 543975 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 544035 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 545567 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 546127 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is becoming a major annoyance. Srini, can this be worked on in early 2.25?
Andre, not sure. But We are gonna work on UAM for 2.26. Together with that we can tackle it.
*** Bug 548411 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 561073 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #37) > Andre, not sure. But We are gonna work on UAM for 2.26. Together with that we > can tackle it. > Srini, any news? You are aware of the fact that Evolution is unusable on any netbook?
Andre, First of all, kill-bonobo will give us some hope on widget packing. Second, the first time druid is awfully bad. For OpenSUSE, I had a crude hack, that packed everything under a scrollbar, but not for trunk and it came well on x600 screen. I should still find some one to pick this up and do the druid in a better way.
I am running gnome - evolution (2.22.3.1) on a brand new EeePC-1000. The screen size is 1024 x 600. It my humble opinion that one of the following should be done. 1 - detect the screen size and if found inadequate for your design, display a small system modal that informs the user of the minimum screen size required to run Evolution. 2 - make the dialog screen size conform dynamically to the physical screen real estate. There is a great deal of white space in these dialogs. --- FYI I am trying to create a small, low cost, portable, Fedora Core based "toaster" for accessing Microsoft Exchange. If successful, and if clients will pay us for configuring these hosts, we will be able to contribute some proceeds to your organization.
*** Bug 563228 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 564336 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
re #42: This bug can be worked around in GNOME using two rows of desktops, and running Evolution in the upper row: the Preferences window will hang off the bottom of the top row, into the desktop of the bottom row. It's a lousy workaround, I know, but if you're desperate for functionality, it's something, until it is addressed.
*** Bug 564340 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Regarding the recent boost of netbook that usually use 1024x600 screen resolution this bug becomes far more important IMHO. There aren't so many windows that require changes but * Preferences * Import Wizard should definitly be fixed. I don't think it's very difficult thing to do!
(In reply to comment #41) > Andre, First of all, kill-bonobo will give us some hope on widget packing. > Second, the first time druid is awfully bad. For OpenSUSE, I had a crude hack, > that packed everything under a scrollbar, but not for trunk and it came well on > x600 screen. I should still find some one to pick this up and do the druid in a > better way. Srini, even if it's crude - if it improves the current state of Evolution on netbooks (let's call it unusable) I want to see this going in soon so it could receive some testing... keep http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyfive in mind. Or maybe even if it's some kind of if (screen_resolution < $whatever) crudehack; else as_always; if that's possible at all. Currently we're just losing market share IMO.
Post the patch for review, at least.
there are some patches http://launchpadlibrarian.net/18946858/patches.tar.gz contributed to the launchpad bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/evolution/+bug/8629 personally I have been involved in stripping out Evolution and replacing with Thunderbird for a netbook project due to this single issue.
Created attachment 126255 [details] [review] Hacked Patch On multiple demands I give this. Feel free to use if you want it. Few issues, * You can fix the environment variable based thing to runtime screen resolution detection, or gconf or anything better * I disable receiving options in the druid, which user anyway can set it later as it is just an additional option. * I kick shrink the timezone dialog also into a scrolled windo iirc. THere is some issue which I don't remember much. THis code is atleast 3-4 months old. Im not sure, if it still applies.
*** Bug 567948 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Very unlikely that this will be fixed for 2.26, unfortunately.
*** Bug 577646 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I confirm this issue. I'm using Ubuntu Network Remix and it comes with Evolution installed by default, but in a Acer Aspire One (1024 x 600) Evo it's unusable because of the configuration dialog size.
This issue has been confirmed already.
*** Bug 503845 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 490305 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 512368 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I'd like to add that the calendar view also has problems: it doesn't even fit completely in a 1024x768 desktop (it's too wide by a few pixels).
*** Bug 230976 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Evolution also doesn't work in 1024x768…
*** Bug 586819 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
On the Ubuntu Launchpad bug Gean has sensibly suggested adding a maximize button to the top of the dialog window. This would solve most of this problem by adding a scroll bar at the side if needed. <https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/23810>
*** Bug 590036 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 591234 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Dear developers, please consider fixing this bug in nearest future as it really makes use of Evolution very difficult on smaller screens. Thanks a lot for your attention.
Using Anjal instead might be an option.
Anjal looks very interesting, nice work Srini. But that is presumably only an option when Gnome is planned for a small screen, such as in Ubuntu Netbook Remix. But in most cases I just expect things to work on whatever screen I plug in. So Anjal is great, but shoudln't change the status and importance of this bug.
Unsetting GNOME target. This will not happen for 2.28 and I don't consider this a blocker anymore now that Anjal is available.
*** Bug 595218 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 596489 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 596930 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Im using 800x480 with one panel with autohide... Evolution works great! Mail Ok. Contacts Ok. Calendars Fail. Tasks Ok. Memos Ok. Using Calendars maximized, Mail, Contacts, Tasks and Memos dont fit on my screen. Ex. I can work nice with Mail, but when i open Calendars... Evolution window becomes bigger and dont fit on my screen... when im back to Mail... Mail neither fit on screen... seems like Calendars is setting a fixed screen of (>800px) × 480px (yes, 480px using "Clearlooks Compact" theme and 8px font size) Thanks!
*** Bug 601295 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #74) > Im using 800x480 with one panel with autohide... > > Evolution works great! Mail Ok. Not for me. I'm using Fedora 12 with Evolution on GNOME 2.28 and I can't resize the main window at all under 886x567. Barely too tall, and much too wide. I'm using Clearlooks normal and 9pt Deja Vu, but even with 8pt it's 860x589. With Clearlooks Compact and 8pt Deja Vu, it's STILL 842x459 (better but still too wide), and with DejaVuCondensed or Droid it comes to 810x459 -- still wide enough that Metacity will haphazardly shift the window a random 10 pixels whenever you click on anything. Anything font size 9pt and above guarantees a window size of at least 850x477. This means that every view is unusable in Evolution on 800x600, and would be a disaster on anything even smaller. Has there been a regression or a change in UI layout? Anjal is no substitute for full-function Evolution. GNOME should not require a special-case (and extremely ugly and slightly glitchy) UI theme and the SMALLEST font possible just to make a single program work at 800x600. This also speaks to the greater problem that GNOME/Metacity does not aid the user with windows larger than screen; in fact it's haphazard repositioning hinders the user.
*** Bug 574646 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 536547 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 535402 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 492957 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Updating the version. Still the same set of problems on 2.30.x as well
Created attachment 160139 [details] Screenshot of evolution 2.30.0 main dialog Even without windows decorations the window is 1097 px wide, thus the scrollbar doesn't fit on the screen. Seems to get worse with every release because now in 2.30.x the sidebar gets wider if the folder name is long or indented and there is no way to drag the sidebar or the main window smaller.
*** Bug 619614 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 620157 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 626050 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 627127 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
it dosent help that thunderbird has exactly the same problem giving a distinct dearth of usable email/calandar/tasks/other stuff apps on netbooks see also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=416263
Oh, this bug is also reported on Ubuntu's launchpad bug traker, people working on it here may want to subscribe to that one as well https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/23810
A lot of work has gone into this. I'm tempted to close this bug, and just file individual bugs for dialogs that don't fit in low resolutions, when we find them. Opinions?
It may also be that some of the changes that were made only get activated when Evo is run in express / MeeGo / small-screen mode. We should look into whether these changes should be used by default. For example, I removed some crackish options from the Mail Preferences dialog - they are not useful for netbooks, and they don't seem to be useful for desktops, either.
I still having problem with Evolution Calendar..., using 1024x600, just doesnt fit...
(In reply to comment #89) > A lot of work has gone into this. I'm tempted to close this bug, and just file > individual bugs for dialogs that don't fit in low resolutions, when we find > them. > Opinions? Please do. But we should agree on a minimum resolution to target for normal Evolution mode. 800x600 just doesn't seem realistic for today's monitors, so I suggest we target 1024x768.
@Matthew Barnes Netbooks are using a 1024x600.
Express mode is for netbooks. I'm talking about normal desktop mode.
Indeed. some netbooks have even smaller screens.... I think the time when you could assume most people had 1024x768 are long gone... computers are getting smaller and smaller at the moment.. prehaps define that the optimal resloution is 1024x768 but that at resolutions less than that the window should be able to cope even if its not quite as easy to use the most simple solution to this which i cant understand why it keeps being rejected out of hand is to add a scrollbar to all dialogs (only visable if the dialog window size is smaller than the content size) in the case of large screens you would see absolutely not change in the case of small screens whay you cant use now would be accessable, but you would likly have to scroll down to see it
*** Bug 629987 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 631224 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
adding a scrollbar might be a solution but really too many settings confuse users
*** Bug 634013 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 634634 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 635322 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is getting worst. I am on a netbook, 1024x600, and now even mail is difficult to read. If I switch from the main view to the calendar view, the main windows grows in vertical, and after that I can't reduce it back to fit in the 600-<panel height> available screen. Not even to the full 600 pixels. I think that the netbook crowd would be very pleased if this bug were squashed as soon as possible. Thanks!
************************************************* FOR NETBOOKS, USE --express MODE. THIS BUG IS ABOUT "NORMAL" SCREEN HARDWARE ONLY. *************************************************
*** Bug 635906 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 636583 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 638529 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 640559 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 640711 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 641658 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 642425 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 181357 [details] Screenshot showing Evolution 2.30.3 Preferences Window Not Fitting Screen on 1366x768 screen
evolution-2.91.90-126.1.i586 --express mode on fcrozat's openSuse11.3 based GNOME3 live cd from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/Medias/images/iso/GNOME_3.i686-0.0.6-Build1.1.iso on a Lenovo Ideapad S10-3t with 1024x600px: * Evolution unstable warning dialog in other languages than English is too high, hence the "OK" button at the bottom not displayed anymore. * Using "Edit > Preferences" still create dialogs too high to be displayed.
*** Bug 644454 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #103) > ************************************************* > FOR NETBOOKS, USE --express MODE. > THIS BUG IS ABOUT "NORMAL" SCREEN HARDWARE ONLY. > ************************************************* I just tested this and in --express mode, the setup screens are usable, but the contents of the preferences window and some other UI problems are not addressed in --express mode.
@André: I have noticed that in 1024x768, the main window is too wide in certain locales such as French. The only workaround (so that the maximize function doesn't behave erratically) is to change the DPI or gnome's text scaling. Should I file a separate bug report or is it relevant to this one?
*** Bug 646258 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 430006 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 661111 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 666152 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 635769 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This bug now is more than 7 years old and there hardly is any progress. How about creating 3 dedicated bugs for the main window, the preferences dialog and the first time configuration wizard? I think the main window can be addressed here, but the latter two should get their own clones.
*** Bug 679197 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 227572 [details] [review] evo patch for evolution; This makes each section of Edit->Preferences dialog scrollable, with minimum content size 320x240 pixels. Users with large-enough resolution will not notice any change, the dialog will occupy as much space as possible on its first show. There is one little disadvantage, the section content is scrolled as whole, which means with the top tabs as well. It is because the content size is driven by the preferences window itself, not by each content's tab separately.
Created commit 354794e in evo master (3.7.2+) Created commit 35ca2c6 in evo gnome-3-6 (3.6.2+) Please open separate bugs for each window, if you find any other (I think the other windows, mentioned in comment #0, are fine in 3.6.x/3.4.x of evolution).
*** Bug 244429 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #124) > Please open separate bugs for each window, if you find any other (I think the > other windows, mentioned in comment #0, are fine in 3.6.x/3.4.x of evolution). I see the relevant bugs are in Blocks section of this bug report, thus I take this back :)
Milan, I see commit messages and comments about how this *might* work. Is this actually fixed and tested? Would be really nice if it actually was tested and confirmed to be fixed, rather than just closed with code that might fix the issue. Every major distribution has had patches for this applied since this was first broken. Any idea how this is better than the patched solutions? By the sounds of it, just making the entire modal a scrolling area was the "fix" here. I'm certain the patch I worked on 2004ish for Gentoo actually made the modals functional at smaller resolutions, including tabs not being in the scroll area. Also, I'm certain ALL other comments I've made in the past on this bug have been deleted for some reason. Mostly I've tried pointing out this is a Major Blocker, not just some minor cosmetic thing needing addressed. Or you can just delete this comment, and I'll happily continue not using Evolution. Wendall
I test things before I commit them. Of course, it's always possible that the testing can miss some corner cases, but I believe I didn't miss any in this particular fix. I'm not sure whether you count Fedora as a major distribution, but for example it has no patch for this issue applied at all. Furthermore, if you have patch for this, and you do not share it in public, by attaching it here, and ask for a review and inclusion in upstream, instead of patching only distribution, then I think there is not much help from the upstream side. Maybe the scrolling with tabs is suboptimal. I realized later that Contact editor has scrolling areas for each tab done separately, though it's a static dialog, not generated on the fly. If there will be more people disliking current state, then I can do the harder way, though the current solution tries to be transparent for users with large enough screen estate, aka they will not notice any change on this when they open the dialog for the first time.
Hi Milan, thanks for your work on this. Just a quick check/question, given that I'm not too good at deciphering C and you didn't use size_request or get_height: Am I correct in presuming that you set the area as scrollable only if the screen space is insufficient (otherwise don't make the "entire" container widget scrollable, to prevent users accidentally/needlessly shrinking it)? Basically, my suggestion (if it's not what you've done there already) is to make the thing scrollable only when the screen space is insufficient, otherwise don't make it scrollable at all and let it size naturally. Something like http://git.gnome.org/browse/pitivi/tree/pitivi/utils/widgets.py#n928 (the last part of GstElementSettingsDialog's __init__).
(In reply to comment #127) > Also, I'm certain ALL other comments I've made in the past on this bug have > been deleted for some reason. You can see all comments that you've ever made under "All bugs commented" at the right of https://bugzilla.gnome.org/page.cgi?id=describeuser.html . I can say for sure that this report (bug 267787) has no deleted or hidden comments, as I'd be able to see them (admin rights).
(In reply to comment #129) > Am I correct in presuming that you set the area as scrollable only if the > screen space is insufficient (otherwise don't make the "entire" container > widget scrollable, to prevent users accidentally/needlessly shrinking it)? It's always scrollable. What I do is to check the minimum preferred size of each section, get a maximum of it, and then compare it against available space of the monitor where I expect the window will be shown. If the monitor space is large enough, then I enlarge the Preferences window to the size it needs to not show the scrollbars, otherwise I make the window as large as possible, according to monitor constraints. Why would it be a problem to let the user make the window smaller than it is?
> Why would it be a problem to let the user make the window smaller than it is? Only if the shrunk window size is remembered the next time it is shown, I guess. I mean, other than that it's not really a severe problem beyond "users might shrink it accidentally" (trust me... that can and probably will happen!) and "theoretically-speaking, it doesn't make sense to allow it when the screen space is sufficient" :)
OK. The size is not remembered, thus the next time you run evolution and open Preferences it occupies as much space as it can. The size is "remembered" only per session, because closing the window doesn't mean clean its structures and memory it needs. It's since some version I do not recall, and you may notice the second and following Edit->Preferences call is significantly quicker than the first call.