Unity

regular applications should have a "Open New Window" menu entry by default

Bug #785271 reported by Lucian Adrian Grijincu on 2011-05-19

134

This bug affects 42 people

	Status	Importance	Assigned to
Ayatana Design	New	Undecided	Unassigned
Unity	Incomplete	Undecided	Unassigned
unity-2d	Invalid	Undecided	Unassigned
unity (Ubuntu)	Incomplete	Undecided	Unassigned
unity-2d (Ubuntu)	Invalid	Undecided	Unassigned

Bug Description

When executed again, most applications support creating a new instance.

Some applications (a minority) default to opening an existing instance (e.g. Firefox, Empathy).

The way Unity handles things now is to force the majority of applications to add a Unity-specific .desktop file entry to support "Open New Window" menus. That means a lot of work patching .desktop files.

E.g. https://bugs.launchpad.net/terminator/+bug/774035
add a "Open new window" entry in .desktop file for unity integration

It would take less work to patch applications that are special and when executed without any arguments bring up the current instance and it would also serve to document that specific behavior.

If presented a normal .desktop file without any Unity-specific entries, Unity should display a "Open New Window" menu entry that would just launch the application as written in the "Exec=" field.

Special applications should require special menu entries. Regular applications should not have to bother.

Tags:

Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu) on 2011-05-19

summary:	- Applications should have a "Open New Window" default + normal apps should have a "Open New Window" menu entry
summary:	- normal apps should have a "Open New Window" menu entry + normal apps should have a "Open New Window" menu entry by default
summary:	- normal apps should have a "Open New Window" menu entry by default + regular applications should have a "Open New Window" menu entry by + default

Revision history for this message

Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu) wrote on 2011-05-19:

This was first suggested here:
* https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/734170/comments/7

I believe (haven't checked) this is also the behavior of GNOME3's Dash.

Revision history for this message

Dimitris Papageorgiou (papageorgioud) wrote on 2011-05-19:

I'll point out something I find very annoying, the nautilus launcher on right click says go to personal folder (or something like that, my desktop is set to greek language) and yet when you click it it takes you to the last accessed nautilus window, which could be open on any random directory. I have no idea why this was chosen as the default behaviour.

Revision history for this message

Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu) wrote on 2011-05-19:

Dimitris, please file that as a separate bug report.

Revision history for this message

Dimitris Papageorgiou (papageorgioud) wrote on 2011-05-19:

Lucian, in my opinion they should make that bug go away by having right click -> $appname in the launcher always open a new window :)

Gord Allott (gordallott) on 2011-05-20

Changed in unity:
status:	New → Incomplete

Gord Allott (gordallott) on 2011-05-20

Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status:	New → Incomplete

Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu) on 2011-05-31

tags:

added: needs-design

Revision history for this message

Syraxes (syraxes) wrote on 2011-06-01:

It should be possible that for all the applications in the Launcher :
right-click opens a context menu that always contains "Start New ..." , "Remove", etc.

Allowing the user to be in control of opening the applications is a basic feature , and Unity fails to achieve that.

About two weeks ago my inability to discover how to open multiple Terminals at once have caused tons of frustration and un-installation of unity.

I have recently found out about middle-click, but this is not easily discoverable. The feature "Start New ... " should be present in the right-click menu.

Marco Biscaro (marcobiscaro2112) on 2011-06-01

Changed in unity-2d:
status:	New → Incomplete
Changed in unity-2d (Ubuntu):
status:	New → Incomplete

Revision history for this message

VladimirCZ (vlabla) wrote on 2011-09-24:

Middle click:
- is not offered by unity to the user (it must be discovered by searching)
- is a disaster if you need to work with a little touchpad and large fimgers

The feature "Start New ... " should be present in the right-click menu !!!

Revision history for this message

Joshua Lock (incandescant) wrote on 2012-12-04:

I only discovered the middle-click to launch new window feature by searching for and reading this bug report. It would be much more discoverable if this were a menu entry in the right-click menu of the Unity launchers.

Revision history for this message

Franck (alci) wrote on 2012-12-05:

Also notice that some mouses just don't offer a middle-click button.
Most notably, the "Ubuntu Mouse" found here http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=1044 (and also on my physical desktop) does not support middle-click !!!

Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley) on 2017-06-29

Changed in unity-2d:
status:	Incomplete → Invalid
Changed in unity-2d (Ubuntu):
status:	Incomplete → Invalid

Report a bug

This report contains Public information

Everyone can see this information.

Duplicates of this bug

You are

Subscribing...

Edit bug mail

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

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