GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 80791
Applets/buttons should be flush with panel edge
Last modified: 2015-03-24 13:00:31 UTC
Applets like the tasklist and deskguide should be flush with the panel edge so that they are easier to locate and select with a mouse. Items on the panel would be more usable in general if the panel took advantage of Fitts law, that screen corners are infinite in all both directions, and the sides in one direction. This was an option in gnome 1.4 that should be the default in gnome 2.0
moving to gnome-panel (Gnome2) product
adding myself to the cc... many apps such as the wla, wsa, cd applet, clock the list go on violate fitts law, it would be a major usability upgrade for us if we firxed this in the gnome2.2 - 2.4 time frame
*** Bug 86714 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Just noting that mail to reporter bounces.
[Isn't this a duplicate of 55491 or vice versa?] Here are some notes about it: - If you have a non-menu panel and the background set to "default", the panel gets a shadow around it that prevents the edge pixels from being active. It would be possible to just get rid of this shadow (menu panels don't have it), or only draw the shadow on those edges that are not at the border of the screen. - Applets that don't focus themselves or have a tooltip will get a focus frame drawn around them by the PanelApplet. This means an extra pixel at the top and at the bottom is allocated around the applet. If the applet only needs button presses, it can connect to the "button_press" signal on the applet. This signal will get though even when you click in the focus area. However, connecting to this signal is not a possibility for the pager applet, unless the WnckPager gets a method that can translate external clicks into workspace activations. It is possible to do so, but i wouldn't be a particularly elegant solution. Another possibility might be to allow applets to say that they would draw their own focus, and then communicate to the applet when it was focused. I don't really understand the details here, though, so this might not make any sense. - The WnckPager recently got a method wnck_pager_set_shadow_type() that adds a shadow to the WnckPager. If you click on this shadow, the click goes to the closest workspace, so if applets get the ability to be positioned at the edge, the pager can use the method instead of the GtkFrame. - I did some hacks - disabling the keyboard focus for all and changing the pager applet so that it would use the wnck_pager_set_shadow_type() method instead of the GtkFrame - and as expected, the pager was now flush with the edge. However, this only works if the theme sets Panel::ythickness to 2 as the default theme does. BlueCurve sets this value to 3, and this causes the panel to leave an extra pixel at the top of the pager. If you set ythickness to 5, three pixels are left at the top. I don't understand why this happens.
*** Bug 55491 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
this is a dup of bug 73074 isn't it?
As a user, let me beg you to please fix this! In gnome 2.0 I could slam my mouse to the top of the screen, and click on a button in the window list, and I loved it.
Noah: have you actually tried this with 2.3.x? It should be fixed. Marking as FIXED, but some applets (none in gnome-panel I think) need to be fixed to take up the full panel width using the EXPAND_MAJOR flag.
I haven't looked at 2.3.x. Sorry. I saw the bug was open, so I assumed it wasn't fixed. Thanks for fixing it!