Closing "File Operations" into panel is redundant with minimizing

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

nautilus 1:2.29.91-0ubuntu2, Ubuntu Lucid

When moving or copying files that take a long time, a "File Operations" window opens. This window is both minimizable and closable. Closing it does not stop or cancel the operation; instead, it effectively minimizes the window into a status menu aka indicator (or, upstream, into a notification area item). While the window is open, the menu appears with a "Show copy dialogue" item, regardless of whether the progress window is currently focused or not.

It is not sensible design to have two different destinations into which a window can be minimized. The usual argument here is that minimizing it into the standard window list takes up too much space; but if so, the answer shouldn't be to memorize a different way of minimizing it, it should be to find a way to make standard minimization take up less space. The extra width is not so onerous that we should delay fixing the inconsistency until after that happens.

As I wrote in <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CustomStatusMenuDesignGuidelines>, "You do not need a custom status menu if: ... You just want the program to take up a small space in the panel when minimized." It would be misleading to ship Ubuntu 10.04 with a new design that we think other developers shouldn't imitate.

I suggest that:
* the "File Operations" window be made minimizable but not closable
* Nautilus's libappindicator status menu be removed completely.

Making this change would invalidate bug 507486.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, the suggestion there overlooks what has been discussed before on IRC, copies are not something the user want to interact with or keep open on screen cluttering the tasks lists. The issue is not only on the tasklist widget but also when using alt-tab cycling between things you are doing. Could we consider doing a copy as triggering a system action, once the copy started the copy dialog could be closed since from there the only thing the user care about is to know how much has been copied and when the copy will be done which let the system indicator showing the status of the service

[Vish (vish)]

mpt , According to the wiki criteria"Does your program need a custom status menu?", even RB shouldnt be using the app-indicator and nearly no app should be using the indicator. The criteria are a bit fuzzy .
Maybe a criteria of "Programs which are allowed a custom status menu" would be better. ;-)

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

I'm setting the status of this bug report to Incomplete as this needs some discussion before we can decide what to do with it.

The points raised by the reported in the bug description are very valid ones and I tend to lean to his solution; it's better to have a dialogue open that cannot be closed than to use that hideous and pretty useless AppIndicator icon.

A more long-term solution would be some kind of automatically hidden transfer applet that could be used by Ubuntu One and Firefox as well as Nautilus to show the progress of these kind of operations and allow to cancel, pause and resume. That is out of the scope of this bug report and I think that a good solution to bridge a possible gap between the current situation and a possible transfer applet would be the solution proposed by the original reporter.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Please don't mark a bug report as Incomplete without specifying what information the reporter has omitted. Thanks.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

I once reported a bug against the theme of the indicator icon for 'File Operations', which was promptly closed since said icon was being removed in the future. A quick Google search turns up nothing in the way of references. Can anyone confirm if this is the case?

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

Following up from comment #6, I tracked down the bug report where I was told this and it turns out this bug report was linked to as proof that this indicator was to be removed at some point in the future. The comments here do not suggest this, and I have been unable to locate an resource that discusses this indicator. Has any such discussion taken place, and if not, shall we have it here?

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

Bug #604893 could be affected by the decision made to address this bug.