gdm 'shutdown' button == UI disaster

[Steve Langasek]

Binary package hint: gdm

When booting to gdm, I'm presented with a login screen that includes:

 - a list of users, where the first user is highlighted
 - a 'shutdown' button in the lower right-hand corner of the dialog.

If I *click* on the already-highlighted username, the dialog morphs and gives me instead a login button *in approximately the same location as the previous shutdown button*. This inconsistency is a *very* bad thing, and has caused me to inadvertently reboot my system on login numerous times since the new gdm greeter has landed in karmic.

The lower-right-hand corner of the dialog is almost always the location of the button for the "default" action, and I'm very strongly conditioned to expect this. Having "shutdown" as a default action is not reasonable.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Sep 21 16:19:43 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: gdm 2.27.90-0ubuntu7
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-10.34-generic
SourcePackage: gdm
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-10-generic x86_64

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you have any suggestion on what to change in the design there?

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

suggestions on possible ways to fix this:

- add an inactive 'login' button in the lower righthand corner, so that the default button option is "sensible"
- don't highlight the first user in the list when it's not actually selected yet
- add a confirmation dialog when clicking on 'shutdown'.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

I've moved the buttons to a separate menu as proposed in:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Karmic/LoginExperience

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Thanks, Robert. Moving the shutdown/restart related options into a menu sounds great, since they aren't used that often in gdm, and pose the possibility to accidentally shutdown. Please go ahead.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gdm - 2.28.0-0ubuntu4

---------------
gdm (2.28.0-0ubuntu4) karmic; urgency=low

  * Move shutdown buttons from under user list to lower right corner of screen
    (LP: #434338)

 -- Robert Ancell <email address hidden> Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:44:15 +1000

[Raphael Bosshard (raphael.bosshard)]

Can cou make the button reach the edges of the screen? If it would reach the edges of the screen, this would make the button more easily reachable (Yeah, Fitts's Law and so...)