Desktop menu adjustments for Natty

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Binary package hint: nautilus

When providing the desktop under Unity in Natty, the menu (displayed in the panel) when the desktop has focus should be as follows:

File
  Create Folder...
  Create Document...
  ---
  Open Location...
  Connect to Server

Edit
  Cut
  Copy
  Paste
  ---
  Select All
  Select Items Matching...
  Invert Selection
  Duplicate
  Make Links
  Rename...
  Copy to...
  Move to...
  Move to Rubbish Bin
  ---
  Change Desktop Background

View
  Show Hidden Files
  Organise Files by Name
  Keep Aligned

Places
   *** unchanged ***

Help
  Ubuntu Documentation

An alternative description of this bug would list the changes from the default / current Nautilus menu, as follows:

File menu: all the entries associated with the "parent folder" are not relevant, so drop "Open Parent" and "Close Parent Folders" along with "Close All Folders" and "Close".

Edit menu: drop the "backgrounds and emblems" item, as we don't want people changing the desktop background that way. Add a "Change Desktop background" item, which opens the Appearance Prefs on the desktop wallpaper tab. Drop "Preferences" as that will be available when the file manager is explicitly open showing a folder.

View menu: we drop all entries which are not relevant to the desktop, so Stop and Reload, as well as the "Reset View to Defaults" item (we are always using the defaults here as best I can tell) and the alternative layout formats Icons/Desktop/List/Compact.

We leave the Places menu unchanged.

In Help we drop the "About" because it is an implementation detail that Nautilus is rendering the desktop (this entry can remain in the normal folder window menu, when Nautilus is explicitly being run as a file manager). We add the "Ubuntu Documentation" entry as a more explicit version of "Contents".

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Ted, you worked on getting the nautilus default menu exported last cycle so you probably know what needs to be done better. Could that be done from unity or does it require nautilus tweaking?

[Ted Gould (ted)]

The menus that are there are determined by Nautilus. It works similar to any other Nautilus window in that there is a base set of menus that are then extended by the window. These are just the base set provided by the root window and registered with indicator-appmenu.

[David Barth (dbarth)]

Ted: What's the delta with the patch you already made to nautilus? What is left to do or fix compared to Maverick?

[David Barth (dbarth)]

I think the design, as defined by Mark, is fix-released, so the ball is in the DX court.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Right - just to be clear, I understand where the menus *come from*, I
just want them to be as specified ;-)

Mark

[Doug McMahon (mc3man)]

This would be all well and good if there was a unity panel menu available when focus was on the desktop.
Currently nowhere to be seen (since the update to appmenu-gtk 6 days ago
bug 733050

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package nautilus - 1:2.32.2.1-0ubuntu10

---------------
nautilus (1:2.32.2.1-0ubuntu10) natty; urgency=low

  * 16_desktop_menu_export.patch: Updated menus shown in desktop window
    to make them more reasonable being on the desktop. (LP: #692194)
 -- Ted Gould <email address hidden> Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:41:31 -0500

[Phil Bull (philbull)]

Hi Ted, can you change the "Ubuntu Documentation" string to "Get help with Ubuntu" please? We'll have docs ready soon-ish.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Phil, nice to see you, and thanks again for your leadership on the doc
front.

Darth ;-)

[Ted Gould (ted)]

On Thu, 2011-03-24 at 22:43 +0000, Phil Bull wrote:
> Hi Ted, can you change the "Ubuntu Documentation" string to "Get help
> with Ubuntu" please? We'll have docs ready soon-ish.

Hey Phil, I've opened a new bug with that change so that we can track it
separately. bug 744298