GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 311644
clicking on desktop makes all notes disappear
Last modified: 2010-01-24 01:06:24 UTC
Something changed in gnome-applets 2.11.2 where if you click anywhere on the desktop, all of your sticky notes disappeared. This is extremely irritating and makes the sticky notes virtually useless for me as my notes often contain information I need to be able to see when moving files around or opening a file on the desktop to edit. Please considering making this change at least reversable with a gconf key
This is actually intentional, although the subject of some discussion. Is this more, or less usable then how it worked in 2.10 for you? (PS. it's bad form to confirm your own bugs)
2.10 worked perfectly for me.
Interestingly, very few others liked it.
I think I liked 2.10 better as well, but I don't remember everything about it so I'll just comment on things that work, uh, strangely (or unexpectedly) in 2.11.x. 1) Notes disappear when clicking on the desktop. Why? 2) Left clicking notes panel applet does nothing (or at least appears to do nothing) the first time you click it. I finally figured out after creating a note, clicking the desktop to make it disappear, then clicking the notes panel applet that left clicking shows notes. Why? Those are the only two things that don't seem to make sense.
The new behavior is pretty undiscoverable IMHO :/ Especially to users who are used to the old behavior.
I wrote the patch to implement the current behaviour. See bug 308701. Main problem witht the old approach was that notes were always completely on top of all windows if they were visible. This is pretty annoying when they cover part of a text you are reading. So then you make the notes invisible. Therefore I don't see the notes and then tend to forget about the stuff I wrote on the notes. Making them visible again is just to cumbersome: 1. I need to go to panel icon 2. Click on it 3. Then moving to Show Notes 4. Click on it Read the notes Notes are on top of other text again so I want to hide them again 5. I need to go to panel icon 6. Click on it 7. Then moving to Show Notes 8. Click on it In the current implementation notes are just normal windows, which move to the back as soon as you click on a window you want to have in the foreground. To answer the question of Lucas 1) Notes can also cover stuff on the desktop. You can now easily hide notes when you click on the desktop. The notes dissapear with a visual effect in panel icon. I think this should give a clue that you need to click there to show the notes again. 2) Left clicking on the panel icon always shows the notes. The tooltip also says this. Double clicking makes a new note. In conclusion the patch makes showing (a click on panel icon) and hiding (comes automatically) a lot simpler then it was before. I agree that discoverability can be improved (Suggestions welcome), but when you get how it works it's a lot simpler then the older implementation
I would suggest the following behaviour: one click on applet icon : show notes. next click: hide notes. Making them disappear when you click somewhere on desktop feels like a bug (even if this is a feature). I didn't touch them, why do they disappear ? Also, I even think notes should never disappear. They should not stay on front of other windows, like in 2.10. But in my opinion, they should allways be visible on desktop. Sometimes they may hide some icons, but you just have to move them, like you do when some icons overlap. In a perfect world, they should be sort of desktop objects, like icons. A new note should be placed to not overlap other desktop objects, like new icons don't overlap other icons now. Also, regarding show/hide capability, I think notes should mimic their real counterparts, those ugly piece of papers that say in front of your face until works is done (but not in front of your work window, you don't stick them on your glasses, do you ? (ah, you don't wear glasses...)). Anyway, thanks for your work.
>I would suggest the following behaviour: > >one click on applet icon : show notes. >next click: hide notes. The complete behaviour would be: at each click: - if notes are hidden, show them. - if all note windows are on top of others, hide them. - if not, bring them to top. That way, you have someting that happens at each click.
One additional note, without nautilus managing the desktop there is no way (or at least I can't find it) to hide the notes as the old click on the applet icon doesn't work anymore.
One more vote from me to revert the old behavior, or implement Emmanuel's proposal in comment #8. The new behavior is very much irritating, and not because this is not how sticky-notes used to behave before, but because it is completely different from the way _any_ other application behaves. Neither my browser, nor my terminal, nor any other window iconizes itself when I click on the desktop -- why should sticky-notes do so then? Jaap: I understand your points in comment #6. Probably we all use our desktop in a different way. I usually have large windows but not maximized ones, and it's fine for me if sticky notes are partially (or fully) covered by other windows. Also note that scrolling with the mouse wheel on the desktop also causes the notes to disappear. Yeah, I know, technically the scroll wheel is just another two buttons on the mouse.
Bug #319435 might be related, but I think is different.
Let me pipe up here and say that I actually like that the sticky notes disappear when I click on the desktop. (enough to voice my opinion :) I have been using sticky notes for a couple months now and have dozens scattered all over the desktop. Lets say I have about 7 apps open, and then I open my sticky notes. I now have a plethora of clutter. If I want the sticky notes to go away I just click on the desktop. Its quick and easy. I understand that this is a debatable feature so how about a preference or something? Another option that would be acceptable and avoid the the addition of a preference would be as follows. If the sticky notes are currently visiable, click once on the sticky note applet and they disappear. Click once again, and they reappear.
This is related to bug #315508. In short, an implementation of the older 2.10 method would be accepted as a preference, as long as it was either one very simple well explained option in the UI or only appeared in GConf.
Davyd, I see that unfortunately there are some issues with my patch that hides notes with clicking on the desktop. (Though I really like it) What do you think about toggling visibility by clicking on the panel icon? I could have a go at a patch for that, but how do I obtain if a window is visible to the user. I.e. the stickies might not be iconified but behind another window and such not visible to the user Furthermore I think we should add an always on top menu item in the menu of the window border of the sticky note
Let's stick with the current behaviour for the moment. We have changed this so much over the last 2 years that we haven't come up with a clear consensus on what really works and what doesn't.
I am merging these bugs. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 315508 ***