After an evaluation, GNOME has moved from Bugzilla to GitLab. Learn more about GitLab.
No new issues can be reported in GNOME Bugzilla anymore.
To report an issue in a GNOME project, go to GNOME GitLab.
Do not go to GNOME Gitlab for: Bluefish, Doxygen, GnuCash, GStreamer, java-gnome, LDTP, NetworkManager, Tomboy.
Bug 590276 - [wish] Add scrollbar to Combobox, rather than scroll buttons only.
[wish] Add scrollbar to Combobox, rather than scroll buttons only.
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: gtk+
Classification: Platform
Component: Widget: GtkComboBox
3.22.x
Other All
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: gtk-bugs
gtk-bugs
scrolling
: 581088 (view as bug list)
Depends on: 374871
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2009-07-30 14:59 UTC by tvst
Modified: 2018-05-02 14:45 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description tvst 2009-07-30 14:59:15 UTC
Currently, when a ComboBox is too large to fit the screen two scroll buttons allows the user to see additional items. However, for the following use-cases, this is less than optimal:
1) Alice wants to know how many more items there are, but there is no visual indication.
2) Bob knows the item he is interested in is around 2/3 of the way down the list. Currently, he cannot jump there directly.
3) Joe is not quite proficient at using the mouse and has trouble moving away from the scroll button at the right time, so he always misses his desired option.

Other information:
Comment 1 Nicolò Chieffo 2010-06-27 12:10:22 UTC
This is not a wish, but a bug.
A scrollbar is really needed instead of buttons.
Comment 2 tvst 2010-11-06 11:51:06 UTC
I agree. It would be great if someone from GTK commented here, though. Scenario (3) above is a really big accessibility problem, and I know Gnome is a project that is typically extremely worried about being accessible.
Comment 3 Baptiste Mille-Mathias 2010-12-20 20:57:13 UTC
Hi

A real world example is the language chooser combobox (in the status bar) of gedit: The list is quite long and without scrollbar is hard to know how much items are before and after the visible items, and it's hard to target easily an items.
Comment 4 Jean-François Fortin Tam 2017-04-28 19:26:17 UTC
*** Bug 581088 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Daniel Boles 2017-08-24 22:33:40 UTC
Note that scrollbars ARE shown when in the deprecated and extremely broken appears-as-list mode... just not in the actually usable menu mode. Obviously using list mode is not viable, since it's KOd right now, and if the bugs with that were fixed, it still wouldn't be good to use as it's removed already in GTK+ 4.
Comment 6 Daniel Boles 2017-09-13 15:33:54 UTC
(In reply to Daniel Boles from comment #5)
> Note that scrollbars ARE shown when in the deprecated and extremely broken
> appears-as-list mode... just not in the actually usable menu mode. Obviously
> using list mode is not viable, since it's KOd right now, and if the bugs
> with that were fixed, it still wouldn't be good to use as it's removed
> already in GTK+ 4.

GTK+ 3's appears-as-list mode should be quite a lot better since I've gone through and fixed some of the crashes and bad behaviours it had.

So, users with a strong opinion on this might like to set that property in their ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css or equivalent. However, note that it's removed in GTK+ 4


It may in some ways be a shame that list mode was removed from GTK+ 4 (which I didn't start, only finished). But I wouldn't suggest adding it back as it was: It's good that ComboBox is no longer a widget with an identity crisis, where nearly every method has to check which mode it's in and behave differently to match. I'd say that any such widget should be split in two (perhaps via a polymorphic GtkComboBoxPopup child, etc.)


But anyway, this may hint at the more general solution: an ability to scroll in GtkMenus directly, rather than special-casing this in GtkComboBox. It looks like GtkMenu supports scrolling when torn-off, but not normally, and tear-off is another thing that has been removed in GTK+ 4.
Comment 7 GNOME Infrastructure Team 2018-05-02 14:45:11 UTC
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/321.