GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 303850
Put some pixels empty space between togglebuttons in panel
Last modified: 2007-03-25 20:02:40 UTC
This can be pretty irritating and confusing (especially if you use sloppy window mode) Patch coming up which always brings window to the foreground if you click on the task button
Created attachment 46347 [details] [review] The patch
This used to be the behavior and it was intentionally changed (see bug 79500). We'd need a really good reason to change it.
(Also, note that if you find it confusing due to sloppy/mouse focus as opposed to click to focus, the real bug you may want to fix is bug 90134; see also bug 129897)
Thanks for the pointers. I guess one of the main problems is that with many themes it is difficult to see which taskbutton is currently on in the window list. A thing I guess that could help is enlarge the spacing between the buttons and maybe change the button more drastically. In Windows for example you get a kind of dotted pattern as background. 2 Questions? 1. Would spacing need to aranged in libwnck or in the themes? 2. same question for the dotted pattern.
I have no clue...maybe Havoc, Mark, or Vincent knows... (retitling based on your current questions/suggestions)
spacing between buttons is in libwnck. Changes to the button are hard to do in a theme-friendly way (see bug 120439 for another example)
Isn't this more of a theme issue? I mean, if it's not clear whether a button is activated or not, then the theme is wrong, isn't it?
Partly. One of thing that would improve clearness is standard putting some space between the the toggle buttons. The 3D effect of the buttons is then better visible. I noticed now that the Clearlooks theme is CVS somehow created some space between the buttons. But I guess that is for all togglebuttons. I contacted the author but haven't received a reply yet. Changing title of this bug to "Put some pixels empty space between togglebuttons in panel" Adding empty space is quite simple with the void gtk_container_set_border_width (GtkContainer *container, guint border_width); call, but unfortunately it adds spacing on all 4 sides. I filed a bug 305117 on it to have a call using GtkBorder, but that's a lot of work according to Owen Taylor. He suggests to use GtkAlignment instead. I've looked in to this but don't see an easy solution. Every task needs a button object. So I don't see how I can get a GtkAlignment in there
I'll give up on this request I had. Some of the theme authors already solved this in the themes. So I'll close it.