I fully agree. The new interface is not at all discoverable especially when you
are used to the old behaviour.

When hitting Print-Screen in 3.4, I only noticed a flash and nothing more.
First I thought I did something wrong, tried it again, then assumed something
was broken.

It never occurred to me, that those screenshots were silently stored in
~/Pictures. I only discovered them days later.

Please consider adding back the old save-dialog, or at least show a
notification dialog telling the user where it stored the screenshot.

(In reply to comment #1)
> Please consider adding back the old save-dialog, or at least show a
> notification dialog telling the user where it stored the screenshot.

s/notification dialog/desktop notification/

See also (my righteous rant) here:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=652487#c17

And the other counterpoints given there. Some people can just push things through here regardless.

And now for funny side-effects in bug #672925.

Please allow me to jump on the bandwagon of how absurd the new behavior is.

Could it be that if theres no picture folder, then nothing is stored at all? 

I first also though that this was a bug. Then after I while I thought, maybe theyre doing it like windows now and tried to paste it into GIMP. No success. So i went to bugzilla to look if theres a bug

*facepalm, i miss the old interactive save dialog as well.

its much harder to take series of pictures for a set of semi parallel projects now since i cant set the filename/directory for each picture at the time of the screenshot.

ugh, without the old flexibility i now have to: 
take screenshot, dig out directory with a file browser, decide where the picture was supposed to go, rename and move the picture to the appropriate place, move the file browser out of the way so can take the next screeshot, repeat.

its ok if some people like the 
limited interaction model for some situations  
but its a real pain for other situations,
so i dont see why we just dont 
plant a nice friendly checkbox line 
in control_center-settings-screen 
that reads 

  '[ ] Disable the screenshot save dialog 
   and save directly to: (click to change default destination directory).'  

please restore the save dialog and add the pretty checkbox :')

collura: You can use GIMP's screenshot tool for example that still offers all these advanced options and configurations. 
The GNOME default one is meant to be kept very simple now. 
Now plans to clutter System Settings with such a setting.

André, but but’s not simple. MAcCann said this way would reduce work. It the opposite. It makes it harder, not simpler.

Also, GIMP? That isn’t even’t installed by default anymore.

I like the new behaviour a lot. Keeping screenshots minimal feels right - they're a built-in part of the system, but they're not core functionality.

A notification make sense to help with discoverability though.

But you belong to /them/, Allan. You’re a designer and not a user.

Give this a try, write a lengthy illustrated tutorial about how to use the desktop for some complicated procedure.

You cannot do it in one consistent train of thought from start to finish.

(In reply to comment #10)
There was a typo in my last comment. It should have been - "A notification might make sense to help with discoverability though."

I'm a fairly heavy user of the screenshot tool, and the new behavior is very cumbersome for me. I have to find the image in my Picutres folder, move it, and rename it. I have never in my life wanted a screenshot in my Pictures folder (making it oh-so-easy to set it as a background image). I've never wanted to manage a screenshot with my photo-management app. The old dialog was nice enough to remember where I last saved a screenshot, making it easy for me to take a few shots in succession for a project.

I recognize that I'm a professional user, and that maybe I should be using a specialized tool made for people like me. That's fine. But if it's not for me, who is it for? I'd really like to see this information:

1) Who's the target audience?
2) What are they trying to accomplish?
3) What's the best behavior to help them do that quickly?

My guess, based on what I've observed people do, is that most people take screenshots to quickly share them with somebody, either using an image-sharing website or by sending over email or IM or whatever. A smaller but still sizable group of people save the file so they can do something with it, like include it in a document or other sort of project.

As such, I think the best behavior is a dialog that lets you immediately send the image immediately to various useful places, and hey since there's a dialog anyway there's the option to save it as well.

( ) Upload screenshot to [ Twitter   v ]
( ) Send screenshot to [ Wanda   v ]
( ) Save screenshot

Something like that, except better.

My +1 to reverting the behaviour, or at least adding a gsettings value to always use interactive mode.

I agree wholeheartedly that this is a terrible change. If I take a screenshot, I want to immediately be able to give it a name and save it to a location rather than having to search for it, rename, and "move to"! Not to mention the times I've hit Print Screen accidentally while reaching for the backspace key (which is right below it on my laptop), and being able to simply click "cancel" on the dialog box that pops up is a lot better than going and deleting the file.

Please, please, please change this back.

Think of it this way. Your users are in two groups: those who want the saving of their screenshots to be quick, easy, and involve little-to-no user input, and those who want to choose where they get saved and under what name.

Previously, Group 1 needed to use two keystrokes (Print Screen, Enter) to accomplish their goals, and Group 2 used one keystroke followed by simple changes in a dialog box.

This change removes the necessity of Group 1 pressing Enter, and replaces it with making Group 2's lives very difficult. It's not worth the tradeoff.

(In reply to comment #1)
> I fully agree. The new interface is not at all discoverable especially when you
> are used to the old behaviour.
> 
> When hitting Print-Screen in 3.4, I only noticed a flash and nothing more.
> First I thought I did something wrong, tried it again, then assumed something
> was broken.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=671831 is another example of a user being confused by the new behaviour as it is totally non-discoverable.

As you can read from the bug report, the user thought that gnome-screenshot was broken and never expected that gnome-screenshot silently stored the screenshot in ~/Pictures.

The problem really is about discoverability here. Once you know about the new behaviour and you know where it is stored, the behaviour gets kinda bearable.
But if you don't know, that gnome-screenshot stores the screenshot automatically, you are completely lost.

Please see this bug report from the perspective of a user who never used the new gnome-screenshot. How is he supposed that the pictures was successfully taken and where it is stored?

*** Bug 673003 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Chalk me up as another confused user who only found out about this from the Debian bug report.

I don't really care about having the old behaviour back, but some sort of notification in the shell would be nice, perhaps with the ability to browse the Pictures directory or start editing the image?

I am voting for the old behaviour too.

I wanted to quickly share a screenshot, but after a flash I've got no save dialog. So I first tried to check a home folder and found nothing in it (I have no Pictures folder), then I called gnome-screenshot -h, then I found an -i option, which finally gave me what I want (except I've spent too much time on it).

But I was curious and then googled and found a blog post, which refers to Ubuntu bug report, which refers to this GNOME bug report, which shows that this is an intended change.

So do you *really* think that change makes things easier? :)

Bug 673003 has a small patch which does the right thing - it allows us to return save dialog back with a GSetting.

The notification solution seems like it'd be the best compromise, since it lets the user know that gnome-screenshot isn't broken, and it's easily ignored if they've gotten used to the behavior and just want to take a screenshot with minimal hassle.

Adding a setting to revert the behavior isn't a bad thing but I don't think it's sufficient on its own to fix the bug because it's a non-obvious solution on top of already non-obvious behavior. GNOME is about sane defaults, and that doesn't fall in line with that.

What about adding a 'take screenshot with options' entry in {user menu} -> system settings -> keyboard -> shortcuts -> screenshots? It can be unbound by default (since most of the combinations of PrintScreen + modifier keys are already taken up) but at least that way it would be discoverable by people who don't like the new behaviour.

Actually, I just realised that Ctrl+Alt+Shift+PrintScreen is not taken by default. <g>

*** Bug 678880 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Dear Gnome People,

I love Gnome and I like everything you had done with it, even the much controversial hidden 'Poweroff' button.

I used to depend on gnome-screenshot for many tasks. I would be grateful if you could consider including a command-line switch which will provide the earlier behavior. Unfortunately, '-i' switch asks questions and then takes screenshot.

Lots of Love,

Friend of Gnome

*** Bug 680199 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Did the same thing - Alt+PrintScreen and had flash+sound but no dialog box.  Tried pasting in gimp - nothing.  Then off to google and ended up here.

I vote for the old behaviour, or silent to clipboard.  Or at least add a notification to indicate success and location of the file if the current way stays as default.

Cody

*** Bug 681579 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

As another data point: I also had to use google to find out where my screenshots were. And I also find it annoying, because browsing my Pictures folder is not fun. Nautilus renders thumbnails for ages and I can't easily distinguish the screenshots.

Created attachment 224125 [details] [review]
Show notification for saved screenshot

Attached is a proposed patch, which adds a desktop notification showing the path to the file. It also adds a "Show..." action button, which allows you to open the file directly from the notification (in most cases this will simply start eog).

For the action to work, gnome-screenshot needs to stay around and must not exit.
As gnome-screenshot only allows one instance at a time, I've added a timeout which closes the notification after 10 secs.

After applying the patch you need to run autoreconf.

Review / Feedback welcome.

Review of attachment 224125 [details] [review]:

Hi Michael,

The patch would need work, but overall, I don't really like the idea of having a notification like that, I find that it doesn't add any value to the action of taking the screenshot (except for a way to re-display it immediately).

There's a number of things to take into consideration:
- in interactive mode we still have the old dialog, so you never want to display a notification
- we plan to move the non-interactive part of gnome-screenshot in gnome-settings-daemon itself (see bug 681844)
- even if we decide that we would like some sort of notification for non-interactive mode (which I don't think it's the case), it shouldn't be on my default, as that goes against the intent of the original design

I think after bug 681844 is fixed, gnome-screenshot will remove the non-interactive mode. At that point I think it'd be fine to solve this by adding a command line switch or a GSettings option to gnome-screenshot to avoid the first dialog when launched.

(In reply to comment #32)
> The patch would need work, but overall, I don't really like the idea of having
> a notification like that, I find that it doesn't add any value to the action of
> taking the screenshot (except for a way to re-display it immediately).

Seriously? There are 26 people CC'd on this bug and lord only knows how many duplicate bugs have been filed, and yet you don't think a notification would "add any value," despite all those users who think it clearly would?

It is not hard to see why GNOME 3 is flailing.

LISTEN TO YOUR USERS, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE.

Sheesh.

(In reply to comment #32)
> Review of attachment 224125 [details] [review]:
> 
> Hi Michael,
> 
> The patch would need work, but overall, I don't really like the idea of having
> a notification like that, I find that it doesn't add any value to the action of
> taking the screenshot (except for a way to re-display it immediately).

the discoverability is a major usability issue. I can't see how you can dismiss that.

> There's a number of things to take into consideration:
> - in interactive mode we still have the old dialog, so you never want to
> display a notification

True, that is easy to fix, though.

> - we plan to move the non-interactive part of gnome-screenshot in
> gnome-settings-daemon itself (see bug 681844)

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, sorry.

> - even if we decide that we would like some sort of notification for
> non-interactive mode (which I don't think it's the case), it shouldn't be on my
> default, as that goes against the intent of the original design

Well, maybe the original design is flawed. Have you considered that?

Anyway, your call. I'll probably just ship this patch downstream in Debian then.

(In reply to comment #34)

> the discoverability is a major usability issue. I can't see how you can dismiss
> that.

I'm not dismissing that. I think discoverability is generally bad for this kind of global shortcuts, and that's why I think having a desktop file that shows up in the Shell/menus is a good idea - and the workflow in that case is such that there are no magic hidden things happening.

> > - we plan to move the non-interactive part of gnome-screenshot in
> > gnome-settings-daemon itself (see bug 681844)
> 
> Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, sorry.

Care to elaborate? Possibly on bug 681844 itself.

> > - even if we decide that we would like some sort of notification for
> > non-interactive mode (which I don't think it's the case), it shouldn't be on my
> > default, as that goes against the intent of the original design
> 
> Well, maybe the original design is flawed. Have you considered that?
> 
> Anyway, your call. I'll probably just ship this patch downstream in Debian
> then.

I don't see a new design being proposed here, I see a patch, that needs work, which is trying to paper over an issue I don't think we really have.

Trying to stay on the constructive side of things, is the plan I outlined in the previous comment completely unacceptable to you going forward? Hard-code freeze is in two days in any case, so you would need to ship this patch anyway if you want to see something different for 3.6, but I am willing to find a good solution that keeps everybody happy in the long run.

This is getting a little out of hand. I can't tell who's siding with or against whom with all the quotations floating around. 

However, I still feel obligated to express my view that I vehemently advocate enabling a screenshot splash-screen by default not only for those who wish to easily control where and how their files are saved but for the new users that may have difficulty finding them later. If the goal is simplicity for the user then I think an option on the splash-screen to auto-save the files is the natural choice to make things easy rather than asking the graphic designers out there to just "figure it out".

> The GNOME default one is meant to be kept very simple now.

What I have to do now:

1. Press the screenshot button.
2. Go to Activities.
3. Go to Nautilus.
4. Go to Pictures.
5. Drag the screenshot to some HTML5 upload website.

While I used to do just:

1. Press the screenshot button.
2. Press the copy button in the middle of the screen.
3. Paste the screenshot to some HTML5 upload website.

And on Windows it is even just:

1. Press the screenshot button.
2. Paste the screenshot to some HTML5 upload website.

The current solution, that made me think it was even broken, is not simple at all.

What's so hard about doing something like:

1. Press the screenshot button, a notification appears informing the user he can now paste it, or click something in the notification to paste it. Just like an user can interact with the Instant Messaging program through a notification.

2. The user can now paste the image from clipboard to either a website or a folder on his drive, if he pastes it to the drive then the user can directly edit the name of the file; because due to its awesomeness, it'll go in name edit mode on the pasted file.

This is what I would call simple, for every user; whether they are pasting it into a HTML5 website, to a folder he chooses or wants it automatically saved in Pictures; they all have to take the minimal amount of easy to perform timeless steps, not be forced to do harder to perform time-taking steps.

For that matter, the old way was actually already good to some point so just switching back would also satisfy most people; they had a choice back then, it also showed you whether you pulled a good screenshot instead of hiding the screenshot away to figure out later something bad happened.

"Any program is only as good as it is useful." ~ Linus Torvalds

Bugzilla still seems to miss an edit feature these days; even if it were just for a few minutes after the post was made, it would help a lot...

> or click something in the notification to paste it.

s/paste it/save it to the user's Pictures folder/

(In reply to comment #37)
> > The GNOME default one is meant to be kept very simple now.
> 
> What I have to do now:
> 
> 1. Press the screenshot button.
> 2. Go to Activities.
> 3. Go to Nautilus.
> 4. Go to Pictures.
> 5. Drag the screenshot to some HTML5 upload website.
> 
> While I used to do just:
> 
> 1. Press the screenshot button.
> 2. Press the copy button in the middle of the screen.
> 3. Paste the screenshot to some HTML5 upload website.
> 
> And on Windows it is even just:
> 
> 1. Press the screenshot button.
> 2. Paste the screenshot to some HTML5 upload website.

You can press Ctrl in addition to the regular keybindings to automatically save the screenshot to clipboard instead of saving it into Pictures. All the keybidnings are also configurable from the Screenshots section in the Keyboard shortcuts preferences.

Oh, totally haven't looked at that page yet, that's great! /me swaps 'em....

So, this is indeed configurable, nevermind what I said then.

*** Bug 685781 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 687383 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

The default behaviour of silently dropping the screenshots into some folder which almost certainly isn't currently open, with no feedback, is incredibly annoying.

Maybe a tablet/phone mode is desirable but even then it would certainly need some feedback as to what just happened. I can't support the current 12.04 behaviour as a default. As it stands I just wasted half an hour wondering what the heck was happening to my screenshots and reading through two long bug reports (on Ubuntu and Gnome) with growing horror as I realized that this behaviour is actually intended and is being actively defended.

*** Bug 674290 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

For some reason I only just now got the "amazing" screenshot feature.
Not only that the flash animation make the pc unusable for 1 second(since you dont see anything) while also annoying with the sound, renaming the screenshots make it really hard.

These are all minor disadvantages compared to making my Oracle Virtual Box Windows 7 unable to handle screenshots for itself.
When I press print in my Windows, all i see is the stupid animation, while being unable to paste the screenshot in a windows-image-application.

This is really disturbing when making a usablitiy-document about certain interface steps of different windows tools, which involves many screenshots.

This was the final straw, to change from Gnome to Unity.
"In der Not frisst der Teufel Fliegen."
Any Bay in a Storm.

I think that, when you continue adding new Tablet functionalities, every PC-User will flee the sinking ship. And sooner or later you will dissolve into nothingness or being cursed with the apple-hipster-generation.

I registered in this Bugzilla instance just to say this.

Since Debian has given up on firefox/iceweasel security updates for oldstable, I was forced to upgrade to wheezy. Like tons of other users I was immediately bit by this specific instance of the ongoing mutilation of gnome. gnome-screenshot used to be one of the few usable gnome utilities, and now it's a wreck too. Bug 652487 comment 0, which I suppose was the motivation for this change, completely missed the use case of
- single keypress invocation, *and*
- immediate review of the screenshot taken, *and*
- optional file location change that can be skipped (defaults accepted) by hitting Enter.

IOW, keypress/review/keypress and it's done, and the shot wasn't taken blindly. Very frequently the screenshot is mailed to someone else, and the MUA usually doesn't allow the user to review of the screenshot before sending.

Reading through this BZ and the many distro-specific reports, I don't hope to see gnome-screenshot restored to sanity. I'll probably suck it up and learn to live with "--interactive" (which is exorbitantly tedious), or migrate to "shutter" (which is dog slow), or duct tape something together with xwd, xwdtopnm, xzgv and zenity.

*** Bug 707479 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I think this bug can be closed, as it is no bug, but a feature, even a very controversal.
The problem that remains in Debian is that the screenshot gets not saved anywhere. In a fresh Debian install you have only a Downloads folder in the ~ directory. Even with strace I can not see (apart from .cache/) the directory where gnome-screenshots saves its newly taken shots.

Should I open a new bug here, as it most probably is one?

(In reply to comment #48)
> I think this bug can be closed, as it is no bug, but a feature, even a very
> controversal.
> The problem that remains in Debian is that the screenshot gets not saved
> anywhere. In a fresh Debian install you have only a Downloads folder in the ~
> directory. Even with strace I can not see (apart from .cache/) the directory
> where gnome-screenshots saves its newly taken shots.
> 
> Should I open a new bug here, as it most probably is one?

IMHO, I think this is still a bug.

(In reply to comment #48)
> Should I open a new bug here, as it most probably is one?

This is a separate bug. Please file it.

Thx, done, Bug 715038.
(In reply to comment #50)
> (In reply to comment #48)
> > Should I open a new bug here, as it most probably is one?
> 
> This is a separate bug. Please file it.

This bug has become a bit hard to follow and the global keybinding functionality has moved to g-s-d so there's nothing left to do on gnome-screenshot. Please see bug 719919 for the remaining discussion

I would invite anyone that still has problems with screenshot files that are not saved in any directory (which seems to be some of the users here) - to follow (and CC) Bug 715038: "Screenshots are not saved anywhere when target directory does not exist."

Just to not forget this.