Re: [Usability] Panel popup proposal

[Marek Peteraj <marpet naex sk>]

On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 23:45, Boris Goldowsky wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 17:44 +0100, Calum Benson wrote: 
> > On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 14:50, Daniele Levorato wrote:
> > 
> > > I have a suggestion about panels popup menu... perhaps someone has 
> > > already posted something similar however I don't know :-)
> > 
> > We have indeed had long discussions about this before... most of the key
> > points are captured in this (now closed) bug report:
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82642
> 
> Unfortunately the fix for that bug did not solve the more general
> problem, that when your panel is "full" you can't get at its menu - this
> applies to edge panels as well.  

I think a centralised way to manage panels would solve this issue.

> Just the other day my kids moved my top
> panel to the right side of my screen, and it was nearly impossible to
> move it back.  Note that a top panel moved to the side becomes very wide
> (to accommodate the text "Applications  Actions" sideways), and thus all
> icons within it grow to that size, and so you are left with a panel that
> is packed full even if it was quite sparse to begin with. 

Yeah that sucks. But i guess the only way to solve this problem would be
to entirely rotate the whole menu so it would all just go
vertical(perhaps except the text, the characters would line up
vertically but wouldnt rotate 90).
There's probably nothing else you could do except - to forbid it.
But i think a completely rotated menu might at least look cool even if
not that practical.

> 
> On a related note, perhaps it would be nice to be able to lock a panel
> in place, the same way you can lock an applet onto a panel.  It's
> amazing what a few random random swishes with a graphics-tablet pen can
> do to an unprotected desktop......

I just had an idea to do that with a key-modifier. It would allow you to
grab whereever you wish. And wouldn't let you accidentally move the
panel since you'd need to have the keymodifier pressed.
Example - hold down ctrl and grab the panel(no matter where, whether on
applet or not), move.

The donwside of this approach is that it's not that obvious as just
grabbing the panel. But that could be tolerated i guess.

Marek