misaligned close, minimize and maximize

[Pedro Bessa]

When I maximize a window, the close, minimize and maximize buttons don't appear on top of the window, they appear on top of the launcher, but I'm not closing, nor minimizing nor maximizing the launcher, so it's weird, so the close, minimize and maximize buttons should appear more to the right and the launcher should appear more to the top.

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

actual:
x _ [], window title, indicators etc
laun, win
cher, dow

expected:
la, x _ [], window title, indicators etc
un, wi
ch, nd
er, ow

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Pedro: could you take a screenshot of what you're seeing? This would make it easier to follow.

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

Take a look at the top left in the attachment.

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

Take a look at the top left of the attachment.

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

Do you understand now?

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

Windows are rectangles and the rectangles are a group, but you're making windows look like weird rectangles.

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

The white part is a window.

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

The white part is a window.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

patches welcome.

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

If you use Launcher always visible (install CompizConfig Settings Manager -> launch it -> Ubuntu Unity Plugin -> set Hide Launcher to Never), you'll see bad rectangles all day. I had to set Hide Launcher to Autohide to take two screenshots of my Firefox Add-on, because the bad rectangles were ugly. The good screenshots are at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ubiquity-in-awesomebar/

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

While Canonical would still like to tweak the user experience further, most such changes will be put on hold so that this Long Term Support release can focus on "polish, performance, and predictability," he added.
- http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/242237/as_ubuntu_linux_turns_7_precise_pangolin_planning_begins.html

Canonical said so: polish! This bug report wants a polish. Will the polish be available as a simple update, a complicated ppa update or a far-in-the-future distribution upgrade? (Please, be simple update!)

[Owais Lone (loneowais)]

This makes the desktop look so ugly when launcher is always visible. Hope it gets fixed this cycle.

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

Now, the launcher is always visible by default.

This bug report became more important, because this bug happens when launcher is always visible.

Can you call this bug report something more important than wish list like triaged?

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

> Can you call this bug report something more important than wish list like triaged?

You're confusing importances with statuses. Also, you're not coding a patch, so I'm removing unrelated tag. This bug is awaiting design feedback before progress can be made. Confirming that there is a question to be answered. Will be marked triaged when design gives a suitable direction forward.

[Ryan G (rtgkid)]

Pedro: From my point of view, there is no need to move things around. I like it the way it is. If you were to change this, then where would the buttons be when dash is opened? It simply would look strange having buttons moved around when they have always been where they are now.

[shane (shane-animail)]

The buttons have always been there and always looked out of place with the launcher always showing.
The most sensible way of dealing with it would be to have the launcher reaching the top of the screen and the top panel beginning next to the launcher.

Of course that raises the problem of things looking strange with the launcher set to autohide.
Only thing I can think of for that is to have the buttons and top panel slide across with an animation as the launcher shows.
I'm sure that would raise headaches in itself though.

I say the best solution would be to have a large dash icon in the corner, in a "pizza" or quarter circle shape with the panel and launcher growing from it, which would also put more emphasis on the dash button itself.

Of course I doubt this would ever happen so needs some sort of solution to deal with the current button placement.
It does look terribly ugly.

[Roshan (rospkos-07)]

@ shane, all ur suggestions r thought-provoking. em agreeing with pedro about the rectangle thing.

my preference is that if the launcher is to be shown from top to bottom, there should not be a top panel, but the wing panel containing all the app indicators. and this will not have the problem of having top panel sliding across as the launcher is showing when the launcher is set to autohide.

also there should be a floating panel showing the name of the app when we are super-tab in the launcher.

[Roshan (rospkos-07)]

@ Ryan G the click trigger on the dash button is togglable. and i find that above close button somewhat bad design, as it is situated very close to the dash button. for minimize /maximize we can have one icon that is similar to the Apple mac OS 's full-screen icon.

however the dilemma is about the placemnt of the icon in both maximized and unmaximized dash ..em still trying..

[Neil Rodgers (neilr1971)]

I just had to say that I agree the current design looks a bit strange. However one thing I do like is being able to throw the mouse up in the corner to hit the close button on maximized apps. If that was changed I think you'd hear about it from alot of users. I still think the design in Natty was the best looking though, with the BFB on the panel and the window buttons always visible but at the cost of this functionality. Ultimately though I'd like to see window buttons and frames eliminated completely and all tasks related to windows done via window previews or "popups" that are revealed by hovering the mouse over the icon in the launcher similar to dockbarx. Call me crazy but it just might work.

As far as the dash goes I'm always asking myself why it has window buttons to begin with? The Dash is not really a window but an "overlay" anyway, you cant drag it around, it is fused to the panel and launcher, it doesn't have an unfocused state because its always on top, it doesn't have any global menu entries or even a title in the panel. So basically its the farthest thing away from a window in the whole system and yet it has window buttons and one of them doesn't even do anything! What was wrong with the little resize icon that used to be in the corner? It worked perfect and looked nice.

[shane (shane-animail)]

Since a patch was posted to the mailing list regarding this matter: https://lists.launchpad.net/unity-design/msg09055.html
it seems nothing has actually moved forward.

Is anything going to come of this?

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

I'm using Xubuntu and Gnome Shell. I took a screenshot of a rectangular window that you can use as inspiration.

[Pedro Bessa (pedbessa)]

When I argued in unity-design that the dash should be in the corner, Mark Shuttleworth mentioned fitts' law. Firefox tried to use one close button for all tabs first, one close button per tab later, so people found easy to click lots of close buttons scattered in the screen, so people will find easy to click only one close button that is not at the edge of the screen.

Dash was removed from the corner and placed in the launcher, because it's an app. I agree, so it will remain in the launcher, but I want the launcher to go all the way up to the top, cutting width from the top bar.

So I criticize close-in-the-corner to create dash-in-the-corner to realign the window rectangles.

What do you say?

[Pedro Bessa (deltrem1984)]

Shane, you speak so clearly! Please, restart helping me.

Please, move the launcher to the bottom of the screen, because it's looking weird on the left of the screen, because window controls look like they apply to the launcher and the window when in fact they apply to the window only.

Please, move indicators to the bottom-right of the screen, because it's looking like indicators belong to the window when in fact they belong to the distro.

You're looking weird. How come you do nothing about it?