GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 74997
It should be possible to lock down an applet
Last modified: 2015-03-24 13:00:31 UTC
Applets should not be movable with middle click button, since this makes it too easy for a user to accidentally move an applet. The user should have to use the right click menu -> move option to move applets.
<shrug> again, I disagree, but am not really qualified to make any decisions on this.
I don't middle drag does any harm. There are certain default applets I wouldn't want easily moved through middle dragging (for example the panel menus, if they were an applet), but I also wouldn't them trivially removed through right clicking.
well imho I think that these applets at least should not be movable via the middle button: 1. Menubar (preferably divided into individual applets see bug 75026 for justification) 2. GnomeMenu 3. Clock 4. volume control (i know this contradicts a bug i filed, but that was only for consistency sake) 5. Window list 6. Window switcher These are the core applets of any panel, and making them easily movable is probably bad.
Core applets that are placed on the default panels are too easy to move with right click menus. So I don't tihnk middle dragging in particular is problematic. Instead, I want a little flag that allows applets to be "Locked Down". Then, to move them, user has to right click, unlock, right click, move. (and of course it'll stay unlocked after that)
My only objection to that is advance users might find it a wee annoying. But i'll leave the decision up to you. personally i think that just disabling the middle click movement on these applets is enough to keep unsavvy users from doing to much damage to their panel.
I diagree too
I have fixed too many "completely broken" GNOME installations where the only problem was a novice user removed a critical applet, to agree that disabling middle click is all that's necessary. How many windows machines have you encountered where the taskbar is off to the side, and the owner doesn't like it, but just has no idea how to get it back (drag it back to the bottom)?
I agree with seth that some applet should be harder to move than others, i just don't think it should be as hard as seth wants, but i disagree about closing this bug, perhaps it should be reopened and retitled. However, since I am in no position to add code for this, I will respect the maintainers decision. But i still think key menu applets should not be movable simply by middle clicking.
Okay, re-opening ... Lets trash this idea of a locked down applet further ... What exactly do you mean by a 'little flag' Seth ? Should the user be able to change this ? and how ? Or should it be hard-coded into each applet ?
IMO, panel editing is completely busted - think i've come to the conclusion that to try and mix invocation and configurational functionality in the panel is tricky - IIRC windows XP has a specific editing mode. I don't think there is time to fix it properly for 2.0 tho. How hard would something like an on/off switch to completely lock editing of the panel and applet editing be?
We're talking specifically about seth's idea of being able to lock down a single applets position So, general gripes about the panel not allowed :-)
I would consider this change important for usability if we move to a menu applet rather than foobar, since I'd want the menu applet "locked down" by default. What I would conceive of is a standard setting added automatically to each applet along with "Move" and "Remove from Panel". It should be above them in the menus and would be a checkbox item entitled something like: "Lock on to panel" or "Lock position" or something like that. When it is checked, the applet cannot be moved or removed and obviously the "move" and "remove" items are greyed out. Any applet the user adds should be unlocked by default. But, the default panel schemas (i.e. what users with no pre-existing settings get) would have a panel at the top with a menu applet that was locked by default, and a window list applet and a workspace switcher that are locked. The reason is that these are all applets where if they go away GNOME would be seriously crippled. I wouldn't terribly mind if they were the only applets that had this functionality, but operating on the 0,1,n principle it seems at least semi-reasonable to add this to all applets. I don't think it would confuse people much because the functions that were "disabled" are right below this in the menus, and so the association should be obvious pretty quickly. Its a serious problem when user's without too much GNOME experience accidentally remove important applets, and this adds one more barrier to that. (of course, I agree with Nils, long term we want a nice friendly panel designer, but even then I would support having these applets bring up a warning if you try to remove them from in the panel designer, or something)
Sounds reasonable, I'll do that soon
Mark, can you do that for the panels themselves - as well as their contents?
*** Bug 102803 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Okay, that's done at last on HEAD: 2003-05-26 Mark McLoughlin <mark@skynet.ie> Implement a "Lock" flag on applets so you can disable moving them about. Fixes bug #74997.