unexpected right click behavior in nautilus

[Vitaliy Kulikov]

then no file is selected, right click on any file in the list doesn't work.
popup provide behaviour for current folder not for expected file

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: nautilus 1:3.4.1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.37-generic 3.2.14
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Apr 29 11:27:44 2012
GsettingsChanges:
 org.gnome.nautilus.window-state geometry '1163x602+326+218'
 org.gnome.nautilus.window-state start-with-status-bar true
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111012)
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-04-27 (1 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[21M (21m-deactivatedaccount)]

Just to clarify the issue: in List view, right-clicking an empty area of an item's row or a folder's expand/collapse arrow, i.e. right-clicking outside an item's icon or text (name, type, date, etc.), deselects any selected items and displays the (current tab's) folder's context menu. I hope this is a bug, because it is obviously a counterintuitive behaviour when using List view; right-clicking anywhere in an item's row should bring up that same item's (or the selection's, if the item is part of it) context menu. I never noticed this before upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04.

[Mattias Johnsson (m-t-johnsson)]

Yep, just to confirm, I have the same behaviour, just as Shinoda describes. It's very irritating.

This is on a fresh install of 12.04 64-bit, so it's not just an upgrade-related bug.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, no that's not a bug, before it was impossible to get the context menu in list view, now if you click on the text part of the row you will get the context menu for the item, if you click on an empty background part you will get the folder context menu

[David R. Miller (zplb)]

I personally had given up using Nautilus in 12.04 after several times of painstakingly selecting a number of items, then right-clicking to choose "cut" or "copy," then losing the selection instead. I assumed it was a bug. I never would have discovered that you now have to click on the visible characters of the name, and I don't think it's a good idea to implement such hidden behaviors for a number of reasons.

I personally have no need to access the folder context menu with a mouse in list view, but if that feature is in demand, is there a different way of accomplishing that without breaking the right-click for everyone else who uses "open," "cut," "copy," and "trash" all the time?

[21M (21m-deactivatedaccount)]

What David said about losing the selection keeps happening to me too. I think it is infinitely more useful and productive to keep the usual behaviour everyone who uses list view (in any application, really) is accustomed to than to have a folder context menu whose few commands can also be found in the menus, if anyone needs them. If I remember correctly, this is also the behaviour in some Windows Explorer versions, which I always felt counterintuitive, so now having this in Nautilus too is definitely a regression for me.

Before, when the list didn't fill up the whole folder's viewport, the context menu was still accessible by right-clicking the empty area below the last item. As a suggestion, I'd rather have a (forced) small empty space below the last item at all times when the list filled the viewport for context menu accessibility than this new behaviour. But maybe that would look a bit awkward, so here's another suggestion: make the folder's context menu pop up on column header and/or status bar right-click. I believe this would probably make everyone happy, so if this is not the place to leave this suggestion, could anyone be so kind as to point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.

PS: Or just make the new behaviour optional. Shouldn't be that much work, I suppose.

[Mattias Johnsson (m-t-johnsson)]

I agree with David - if this is intentional behaviour, it's quite unintuitive. I'd suffered through it for a couple of weeks, just thinking that the context/file menu choice was random. I only realised that the difference in behaviour was due to clicking on a part of the file listing with text versus no text after finding this bug report.

Clicking on the empty space *below* the files has always seemed more intuitive to me. And if multiple items are selected, right-clicking anywhere on the highlighted region should bring up the file menu, not a random menu depending on where in the selected region you click.

I do take Shinoda's point, though, that if the list fills the whole viewpoint and you want the old behaviour, there's nowhere to click.

Do we actually need two seperate menus, though? I don't see anything in the context menu that can't be put into the right-click file menu, apart from "properties". But this can be obtained by right-clicking on the directory name, which makes sense, because they are directory properties.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The update there:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/1:3.4.2-0ubuntu1

should address most of the complains in previous comments with that change:

" - Don't remove selection when clicking on a row out of name boundaries"

i.e the "you need to click on the label only" applies only to unselected row with the update, for selected rows you can click wherever you want on the line, that should fix any case of "I tried to copy rows I selected and screwed the selection"

[Martin von Wittich (martin.von.wittich)]

I still hate it :(
Is there a way to get the old behaviour back?