GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 328866
Applets don't look right in vertical panel
Last modified: 2020-11-06 19:57:21 UTC
Please describe the problem: If you set up your panel in vertical (like I do), applets look incorrectly. In fact, all applets that are not square look cropped (GEyes, Stock Ticker, Dictionary lookup.. ). Except the clock, the main menus and the Character Palete, that adapt to their new position correctly. This problem is specially problematic with the uim-applet-gnome, which renders it unaccessible. Steps to reproduce: Just drag your panel to one side of the screen. Actual results: All applets that aren't square look like if they had their sides cut. Expected results: Applets should turn 90 degrees and become in vertical position, just like menus or the clock. Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information:
This looks like a usability issue to me. There are three behaviors here when an applet is on a vertical panel: - The whole applet turns 90 degrees (Example: clock applet) - have to tilt your head to read it)... - The applet expands vertically rather than horizontally (Example: character palette applet) - don't need to tilt to read it; letters in it are arranged in a multi-row column rather than a single row that gets cut off. - The applet expands horizontally and gets cut off (Example: dictionary applet) - this renders some of the applets unusable. Any thoughts from the usability team? It seems like the applets should do waht the character palette does - the text remains readable without tilting your head, just goes downward instead of left-to-right, but... with applets that have form fields (i.e. dictionary) things get complicated. Related bugs: bug 318775 (Keyboard indicator not helpful on vertical panels), bug 325915 (weather applet doesn't work correctly in vertical panel)
Not sure there's an easy answer really... for applets that aren't mainly for monitoring purposes (which have to be visible all the time), I guess one solution when they're on a vertical panel might be to turn them into simple buttons with the applet's icon on them, which, when clicked, pop up the 'real' applet. (Much like the clock applet pops up a calendar when you click on it.) | | | | |+-+| |+-+|+----------------------------+ ||D|| => ||D||| Look up : | fandango || |+-+| |+-+|+----------------------------+ | | | |
How about making it an option, at least for applets where it makes sense. For example the clock applet, which has become rather useless (in Gnome 2.12) when put in a vertical panel since it aligns to the panel, so that you have to tilt your head to read the time. And the aligning isn't even consistent, it seems that: when vertical the numbers are aligned with their 'top' towards the screenedge (consistent), while when horizontal the numbers are aligned with their top away from the screenedge in a bottom panel, but aligned with their top towards the screenedge when in a top panel. This seems very unnatural and counter-intuitive, as one would expect the clock to be aligned up-side-down when the panel is on the top!
It seems this odd behaviour is spreading. Now also the battstat applet displays text in this oddmannered fashion. Who is making this up? What is the rationale behind this? Is it easier to read my clock or battery charge when it's displayed rotated 90 degrees? I mean this is the roman reading system, right? Left-to-right text reading anyone?
The clock displayed properly on vertical panels under GNOME 2.10. It broke when I upgraded to 2.12, and is still broken under 2.14. Upgrades frequently bolloxer things on vertical panels; some checks need to be added to the QA list.
bugzilla.gnome.org is being replaced by gitlab.gnome.org. We are closing all old bug reports in Bugzilla which have not seen updates for many years. If you can still reproduce this issue in a currently supported version of GNOME (currently that would be 3.38), then please feel free to report it at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-applets/-/issues/ Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry it could not be fixed.