Right click menu could confuse users, leading to accidental removal of panel applet

Bug #519553 reported by Dylan McCall
136
This bug affects 28 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Indicator Applet
Won't Fix
Undecided
Unassigned
indicator-applet (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Low
Unassigned
Declined for Maverick by Sebastien Bacher
Lucid
Won't Fix
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: indicator-applet

With indicator-applet taking on the role of the notification area, users will expect to right click on individual items in the menu. Here is a highly likely example involving the Rhythmbox icon:

* A user wants to quit Rhythmbox using its indicator icon. This was possible before...
* He right clicks the Rhythmbox icon. An unfamiliar menu appears with About and Remove from Panel.
* Remove from Panel in the context of the Rhythmbox icon seems to say "remove Rhythmbox from the panel." Upon choosing this option, however, the entire indicator applet is removed. There is no obvious way to add it back.

I suggest that indicator-applet should suppress gnome-panel's right click menus, treating all mouse button events the same (to activate the menu). The behaviour would be consistent with menus elsewhere in the desktop and would prevent confusion of the sort I just described.
This demands the addition of a grabber bar for the applet, but that should not be a concern as time goes on, since the indicator applet will be replacing the notification area in the future.

-----

Please do not ask support questions here. However, if you have accidentally removed this applet and want it back, what you need to do is right click an empty area on your panel, choose Add to Panel, and look for Indicator Applet. That is the applet being discussed in this bug report. If you feel that your experience was due to the issue described here, it would help if you indicate that the bug affects you, but please do not post a "me too" comment.

Tags: usability
Jorge Castro (jorge)
Changed in indicator-applet (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Dylan McCall (dylanmccall) wrote :

Linked in a branch with one possible fix, successfully built and tested on the latest Lucid.

As I suggested, it gets rid of the context menu when the user right clicks over an indicator icon, since users could falsely see the menu which appears as relative to the specific icon. As a result, for example, Remove from Panel may be interpreted as removing a specific indicator from the panel but in fact removes the entire applet.

It adds a handle to the panel applet using the necessary hint. Two reasons for this:
 * We need somewhere else to put a context menu for the entire applet, as mentioned.
 * Applet could exist on the panel with no other contents. The handle functionality is intended for this case, so we should use it. (See window list applet and notification area).

I changed menubar_press to suppress the context menu completely for anything but a left click. This could do with some debate. It is possible to have this behave exactly like a normal menu by removing the menubar_press function. However, no other applets behave like normal menus in GNOME 2.x. So, having this one work that way could give the user a false impression and lead to confusion when interacting with other applets.

Changed in indicator-applet (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Low
Revision history for this message
Thomas Keene (eneekmot) wrote :

I would suggest making the right-click menu for the indicator applet have a label. Put a grayed-out entry at the top of the menu that says "GNOME Indicator Bar" or "GNOME Indicator Applet", or just "Indicator Applet".

Revision history for this message
Dylan McCall (dylanmccall) wrote :

With beta 1, I am seeing a lot of discussions that highlight this issue, where people have lost their indicator applet or are looking to remove specific indicators from the panel. (A mindset that could lead straight into this issue). As I understand it these may be stemming from an issue with the upgrade process not updating the panel configuration, but I am feeling very anxious about it.

I'm happy to play with my patch and implement other options, but it would help to know the "official" word on this first. Is there any interest in this problem, or are we going to just cross our fingers and hope for the best?

Revision history for this message
Зоран Рилак (zoran.rilak) wrote :

Just throwing in my 2¢: this is a glaring usability issue. My girlfriend has removed the entire notification area because she thought she had two "speaker" icons (she was a fresh Ubuntu user at the time, and nm-applet with wireless looked like another volume control) so she innocently right-clicked, "Remove from panel" one of them.

I'm sure there are other (mis)use cases.

Revision history for this message
swoll1980 (swoll1980) wrote :

This happened to me, and I could not figure what I did, or how to fix it. Lucky for me a helpful person over at the UF pointed this out to me. I can see this being a big problem when the final is released, if it isn't addressed.

Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

For a much less intrusive solution, wouldn't it be more prudent to just remove the "Remove from panel" menu entry?

Revision history for this message
Dylan McCall (dylanmccall) wrote :

I agree that would solve this problem in particular, Martin, but there would still need to be some access to that functionality so the handle or some other extra GUI change remains a necessity.

(Well, I always thought gnome-panel needed a full-fledged Edit mode and did away with that annoying locking / unlocking applets stuff, but the thing is almost gone now anyway and I don't think we could do that for a little bug fix).

Revision history for this message
Jason J. Herne (hernejj) wrote :

In my opinion, The simplest approach to this seems to be:

1. Add a handle to the Indicator applet
2. Add a "Close Indicator Applet" right click menu entry that only shows up if you right click on the handle.
3. Remove the general "Remove from panel" right click menu entry.

It may not be 100% intuitive but it should get the job done for Lucid. This is something that seems like it should be fixed before Lucid is shipped.

Revision history for this message
Dylan McCall (dylanmccall) wrote :

Sorry about the extra noise. My patch is "downstream", so I should really put the bug report that way as well :)

Changed in indicator-applet:
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
bgruber (bgruber) wrote :

in the long term, the solution that seems obvious to me is that the menu entry should do what all of these users seem to be assuming it would do... remove that particular indicator from the indicator applet. at the moment, there doesn't seem to be a way to do that.

Revision history for this message
John Stewart (cane-cubo) wrote :

This is the sort of severe and *OBVIOUS* usability issue that just kills Linux in the consumer space. I just installed 10.04 on a test system, went to (what I thought was) delete the mail icon, lost the other icons including the volume control applet, which I want. I browsed the web to restore it, found a comment about re-adding the Notification area. Did so, ending up with an empty space in the menu bar. Read a note about deleting ~/.gnome2 and re-log in, did so, got the battery and bluetooth icons back but still no volume icon.

Revision history for this message
androith (androith) wrote :

Perhaps a short-term solution to you John would be to start gnome-volume-control-applet at startup. It has a mismatched icon, but does the job.

Revision history for this message
wvarner (winshipvarner) wrote :

This happened to me (accidentally selecting 'Remove from panel'), and now I can't find how to add the Rhythmbox icon back to the panel. How exactly do I add it back?

description: updated
Revision history for this message
Omer Akram (om26er) wrote :

Closing the Lucid task as lucid is out

Changed in indicator-applet (Ubuntu Lucid):
status: Confirmed → Won't Fix
Revision history for this message
John Stewart (cane-cubo) wrote :

Does the closing of this bug mean that this won't be fixed until the next Ubuntu release? Note that at Apple this bug would be considered a total show-stopper. User can delete volume control icon and never get it back.

Revision history for this message
Cédric M. Campos (cedricmc) wrote :

Hi!

Since I have upgraded to Lucid, one of the most annoying problems is the indicator applet behaviour. Is of my understanding that you/we are changing from the previous RedHat's notification area applet to Canonical's one, which will bring some problems during the transition.

Anyway, actions that before cost only one click, now costs several clicks with the new indicator (as stated in https://bugs.launchpad.net/indicator-applet/+bug/550809). For instance, Rythmnbox is affected or, even WORST, "files dialog" (like moving files) can NO longer be hidden to the tray. Moreover, its dialog is clearly confusing as pointed by Dylan McCall.

So, I do suggest:

left click --> show/hide window (to the the tray) and/or regular action
right click --> application menu

Optionally:

double left click --> only show/hide window (to the the tray)
left click --> only regular action
middle wheel --> extra functionallity (volume control on volume app or rythmnbox app, browse calendar)

The "context menu" of the indicator applet itself should be moved to the separation bar and it should contain an option dialog.

Thank you for your effort.

Revision history for this message
Cédric M. Campos (cedricmc) wrote :

The "context menu" of the indicator applet itself should be moved to the separation bar and it should contain an option dialog (like icons removal https://bugs.launchpad.net/indicator-applet/+bug/563725).

Thank you for your effort.

Revision history for this message
Ted Gould (ted) wrote :

As much as I'd like to kill the right click menu, it's needed to move the applet. Which unfortunately sucks. I think this is a failing in the positioning code with gnome-panel, but it leads to us needing to have that menu in the applet.

Changed in indicator-applet:
status: Confirmed → Won't Fix
Revision history for this message
Dylan McCall (dylanmccall) wrote :

Hi Ted,
With regards to killing the right click menu (and that whole “applets are constantly at risk of being moved” concept), I have a feature request upstream:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=616244

I totally understand if you don't want to do it, but have you looked into the solution of adding a handle to the applet, like the existing notification area and window list?

Revision history for this message
Ted Gould (ted) wrote : Re: [Bug 519553] Re: Right click menu could confuse users, leading to accidental removal of panel applet

On Fri, 2010-05-21 at 22:53 +0000, Dylan McCall wrote:
> I totally understand if you don't want to do it, but have you looked
> into the solution of adding a handle to the applet, like the existing
> notification area and window list?

Yeah, the problem there is that with one handle in the notification area
and one in the indicator applet -- the whole panel looked bad. And
really, we don't want to encourage people moving them. We'd like them
to stay still. But that's not really a reasonable expectation for GNOME
Panel.

Revision history for this message
Dylan McCall (dylanmccall) wrote :

Okay, I guess this is fixed with Gnome Panel 3 in Oneiric. We don't actually have the indicator applet ported to Panel 3, but if it _was_, the gnome-panel only shows editing options for an applet in its Alt+Right click menu, after unlocking its panel.

To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Duplicates of this bug

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.