Global menu bar snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, à la Windows 95 Start button

[Michael Doube]

There is a really old usability bug relating to mouse accuracy, which Ubuntu 14.04 has rediscovered in its global menu.

Basically, it's super easy to move your pointer fast and hard to the extreme edge and corners of the screen, so you can hit targets placed there quickly. But the global menu only activates if the cursor is a pixel or two from the top of the screen. This is a massive usability bug.

The example from the 90s (yes, 20 years ago) is that Win 95's start button was offset from the bottom left corner by a couple of pixels. That made it hard for people to hit, and if they'd only put it flush with the bottom left it would have been way way easier to click. Hence "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" - e.g. in this post from 2000 http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000063.html

Hopefully this is an easy fix: extend the mouseover activation area for the global menu to the top of the screen. Right to the top zeroth row of pixels. Please?

[Andrea Azzarone (azzar1)]

It works here. Is this 100% reproducible?

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

Yes, it's 100% reproducible. The global menu bar does appear, but only if
the mouse is a little bit (one pixel or so) away from the top, and not
right at the top of the screen.

The global menu bar menu items disappear when the mouse is pushed to the
very top of the screen and reappear when the mouse cursor is brought back
down.

It affects a multi-monitor setup on NVIDIA's proprietary drivers (Dell
T7600 with GTX 680) and my single-monitor laptop (Vaio SZ650) with really
old Intel GM965 open drivers. Both machines were upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04
LTS to 14.04 LTS.

On 22 September 2014 14:08, Andrea Azzarone <email address hidden>
wrote:

> It works here. Is this 100% reproducible?
>
> ** Changed in: unity
> Status: New => In Progress
>
> ** Changed in: unity (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> ** Changed in: unity
> Status: In Progress => Incomplete
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1371590
>
> Title:
> Global menu bar snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, à la Windows
> 95 Start button
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/1371590/+subscriptions
>

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

I can't reproduce this here... Actually we already extend the input area to the top of the monitor, so I can't reproduce this as well

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

Thanks for looking at this. It's 100% consistent for me, on two very different devices, so I'm surprised that everyone else is having such trouble reproducing it.

Perhaps the cursors are the problem, and the pointer is more pointy than expected, after the upgrade?

I wanted to attach screenshots but I see now the cursor is excluded from the capture, unlike previous versions. It's literally a one pixel row difference in position that hides the menu bar items. It almost looks as though the cursor point itself is extending beyond the top limit of the monitor (i.e. into negative y values).

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

OK, here's a little video from my phone showing the menu disappearing and reappearing as the cursor goes over it.

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

I just noticed that on a fresh boot, with only 'Videos' application open, expected behaviour occurs (menu items appear with cursor hard to top of screen).

BUT - when I open another application (Thunderbird) both it and 'Videos' go back to the buggy behaviour - menu items only appear with cursor slightly away from absolute top of screen. So behaviour is somewhat inconsistent.

[Stephen M. Webb (bregma)]

This sounds remarkably like an X11 configuration issue. The only time I've ever seen anything like it is when a monitor gives incorrect EDID information or physical screens are explicitly placed incorrectly within the X11 virtual screen using xrandr.

Could this possibly be a themeing issue?

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

Hi Stephen,

I had the same thought, but the devices are very different - a laptop with
Intel graphics and a workstation with NVIDIA graphics and two monitors (one
rotated 90°), so it seems unlikely to be just a config problem. Is there
some debug / config info that would help test your idea?

On 17 October 2014 14:43, Stephen M. Webb <email address hidden>
wrote:

> This sounds remarkably like an X11 configuration issue. The only time
> I've ever seen anything like it is when a monitor gives incorrect EDID
> information or physical screens are explicitly placed incorrectly within
> the X11 virtual screen using xrandr.
>
> Could this possibly be a themeing issue?
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1371590
>
> Title:
> Global menu bar snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, à la Windows
> 95 Start button
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/1371590/+subscriptions
>

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

For other reasons, I just moved all my ~/.* config files to a backup directory, rebuilt and reinstalled the NVIDIA driver (from NVIDIA's package), and this bug is gone, on my workstation at least.

Both laptop and workstation were upgraded from 12.04 to 14.04 (apt-get dist-upgrade) , so perhaps some stale config is the cause?

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

Oops - spoke too soon. Bug still present. Seems to be not quite 100% reproducible - correct behaviour occurs for some programs and some window configurations (maximised vs windowed), and possibly depending on how many programs have been opened since boot.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Unity because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for unity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]