GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 697680
Can't see content behind modal dialog
Last modified: 2021-07-05 14:33:32 UTC
The new design for modal dialogs are to attach them to their parent window. This seems to have been done to fix the common experience of losing the modal dialog in the window stack. This however has caused a new common problem, when the user tries to move the modal dialog to peek at something in the parent window (perhaps to work out what to name a file etc). A solution that solves both issues, is to snap modal dialogs. That is, dragging the modal window moves the modal window, allowing you to peek behind it. When you let go, it springs back to its attached position. Discussion about this: http://www.mail-archive.com/gnome-shell-list@gnome.org/msg07348.html
That sounds like a good solution and it is unique (not windows nor mac). +1 Gabriel
Hey Sam, this is an interesting idea. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not entirely sure about it though. Couldn't it be a bit annoying? Being able to see the content below but not interact with it seems like it could just lead to frustration....
If that's not too hard to do implementation-wise, it could be a good idea. I don't see how it could hurt the user experience - it actually makes it more fun!
Well, if the window snaps back to it's position immediately, the user is never given the chance to click on the content behind the window, thus it would not appear any more interact-able than the current implementation. The issue is the case mentioned at the beginning of that thread: "I'm attaching a very annoying case that I encounter frequently. When I open a PDF and want to save it on the disk, the modal file dialog asks for the name of the file. The thing is that modal window can not be moved e.g. I can't look at the title of the PDF or whatever to get a clue for naming the file." This is an issue I recognise, and have many times in the past been slightly frustrated with. I click the save button, it asks for a document name, and my mind goes blank. Because I can't see anything behind the modal dialog, I end up having to cancel the interaction, decide on a name and memorise it for a couple of seconds, and bring up the save dialog again. This solves the issue, by allowing you to peek behind the content. Because this can only be done by dragging the window, there is no opportunity to try and interact with the parent window, until you stop dragging. At which point the modal dialog snaps back into place before the user has a chance to do anything else.
I +1 the frustration of Save-As dialog that obscures information [why can't the @&*^@&*@*( Save-As suggest a @&*@&* filename, especially when it is referring to a downloaded file,etc... but that is an application specific issue]. The current behavior makes sens to me, and this seems like a reasonable compromise; not ideal since I can't hightlight-copy anything, but at least I can see it.
*** Bug 722839 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 684849 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
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