small screen resolution: taskbar icons on top of system menu

[Kevin Hunter]

Binary package hint: gnome-control-center

I normally have 1280x800 resolution. However, sometimes I need to mirror my display to a project or presentation. Depending on the projector, this can reduce my screen resolution to 800x600. The issue is with the taskbar quicklaunch icons. As shown in after.png, the icons are drawn behind the System menu.

This isn't so bad, except that if I click on the system menu to restore my screen resolution, the action of the taskbar is to click the underlying icon.

1. The presentation of icon and system menu is not consistent with the "Behind the scenes" of what actually happens during interaction. They should be consistent.
2. I think the correct behavior is to leave access to the system menus, not the icons, so the "behind the scenes" is what should change; the icons should *not* be drawn over top of the system menus.

A plan of action: if there is not enough room to display the quicklaunch icons, don't. Instead, either do a "slideshow" effect, or place a down triangle there which can be clicked to expand to the list of quicklaunch icons.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Jan 20 12:11:14 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: gnome-control-center 1:2.28.1-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-16.53-generic
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-16-generic x86_64

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

that's a known issue though. you can use the keys as a workaround like alt+f1 for the menu.

[Kevin Hunter (hunteke)]

Yep, thank goodness I'm a keyboard person so I could figure that out. Is there an upstream bug related to this? I looked in a couple of places, but I'm not really sure for what I'm looking.

This is a bigger deal to folks less Linux savvy than us. Case in point: I've known about and dealt this problem for over 3 years. My advisor, however, recently made the switch to Ubuntu, and re-pointed this out to me when he couldn't resize his screen back to a normal usage. (He regularly switches back and forth as he uses his tablet to teach classes and give class notes.)

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

well yeah i have almost the same issue when connecting my desktop to my tv to watch some movies, same problem appear here. ok upstream bug is being tracked on bug 44082 ; marking this as dup , Thanks Kevin.