"Places" menu only allows 5 items before changing its behaviour

[Tom Haddon]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

If you have 5 or less items as "Bookmarks" and you click on the "Places" entry in the default Ubuntu menu, the items are all displayed vertically. If you have 6 or more, they get added to a slide out "Bookmarks" menu entry. I would like to have at least 6 items without the items being moved into the "Bookmarks" entry. I couldn't see any way of configuring this.

The reason is, that because they're bookmarks you want to get to them quickly, but as soon as they're added to the slide out "Bookmarks" menu, that slows down access to them.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: gnome-panel 1:2.26.0-0ubuntu7
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-panel
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported, but feel free to report any other bugs you find.

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

It is not clear why placing places in a submenu once more than five places have been added improves usability of the Places menu. If there is a more usable alternative, it should be trivial to implement.

[roffik (roffik)]

I've read somewhere that it is hard-coded in gnome-panel source and has no configuration, unfortunately. I would be thankful for creating a setting for the number in gconf (at least).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

not sure why the bug has been unduplicated there

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

The previous duplicate asks to make the number of items configurable,
and this bug aims to decide on a number different than 5. This bug may
be considered dependent on the previous duplicate, but this bug is
different from the other in terms of design considerations to be made.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

those bugs seem to describe the same issue, the submenu behaviour being suboptimal, the fact that several suggestions are being made to solve the issue doesn't mean they are different issues

[Kuba Paszkowski (kuba-paszkowski)]

Is there any chance to get it "fixed" in upcoming Ubuntu realese?

[Tom Haddon (mthaddon)]

Unmarking duplicate, as this has nothing to do with bug 204567 as far as I can see

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

did you bother reading the bug before changing the status?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

comment on the other bug

"we only need to increase the hardcoded value in the Ubuntu package to accommodate a larger set of initial Places bookmarks."

[Vish (vish)]

@Tom: that bug encompasses this issue too. I would say it is a dup , Kindly read all the comments.

[Tom Haddon (mthaddon)]

On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 16:12 +0000, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> did you bother reading the bug before changing the status?
>

Apologies, I stand corrected.

[Alexander Sashnov (sashnov)]

I guess 7 by default (but really I use 9).

[Alexander Sashnov (sashnov)]

Sory, just looking into gnome-panel-2.28.0/debian/patches/71_change_bookmark_submenu_limit_value.patch
Default value is 8 for Ubuntu 'karmic' at least. This is good, but seems not enought.
12 will be fine default value.

[Vish (vish)]

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. However, a paper cut should be a small usability issue, in the default Ubuntu install, that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. So this bug can't be addressed as part of this project.

- Closing papercut task , we already increased the limit to 8 bookmarks. Making it configurable is a feature request and not a papercut
For further information about papercuts criteria, please read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut.

Don't worry though, this bug has been marked as "Invalid" only in the papercuts project.

[Otto Kekäläinen (otto)]

Here are instructions how to download source, edit it and compile it with a bigger number of Places entries before subfolder: http://www.ubuntu-inside.me/2009/03/howto-display-more-than-5-bookmarks-at.html

There are also Brainstorms about this:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/21133 (primary; 500 voters)
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/14381/ (old; 44 voters)
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/22481/ (includes this, but not limited to; 262 voters)

I find myself constantly navigating to favorite places through the Places menu, and it's annoying to use the sub menu all the time.