Panel items lose their order when panel is not "expanded"

[Cris]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

Reproduce this way:
- panel properties - uncheck "expand"
- move around items until they're in the positions you want
- "lock to panel" every item so that they can't be moved
- now restart your PC (maybe restarting the panel is enough)
- when panel comes up the order of items is lost

Using Ubuntu 7.04

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu May 3 00:21:24 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-panel
Package: gnome-panel 1:2.18.1-0ubuntu3.1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcCmdline: gnome-panel --sm-client-id default1
ProcCwd: /home/cris
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-panel
Uname: Linux cris-desktop 2.6.20-15-generic #2 SMP Sun Apr 15 07:36:31 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439409

[Jeffrey Patrick Lui (punong-bisyonaryo)]

Confirmed in Edgy as well.

[BigBoy_PDB (bigboy-pdb)]

I've had this exact problem in both Fiesty and Gutsy.

The workaround is that an additional restart does not re-arrange the panels and change their locations (meaning that setting them up a second time will fix the problem).

[Adrian Saldanha (adrian-runeap)]

I can confirm this in Gutsy. However, this has happened almost every time, not just once.

[hamacker (sirhamacker)]

I confirm too :

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/187650

[Michael (null-pointer-us)]

This happened to me in 8.04.01 LTS AMD64, all updates as of 10-26-2008.

The gnome bug report is listed as UNCONFIRMED over a year after the original report.

[Mateusz Marzantowicz (mmarzantowicz)]

This bug still exists in Ubuntu 8.10 intrepid (amd64), gnome-panel 1:2.24.1-0ubuntu2.1. It's a bit irritating bug.

[Aaron Roydhouse (aaron-roydhouse)]

I also see this problem with Ubuntu 8.10 intrepid (amd64), gnome-panel 2.24.1. I've tried locking and unlocking every way I can think of but still the placement and order shifts around.

For me is it is particularly the notification area applet (2.24.1) that shifts around. Most other things seems to stay in place. Perhaps it is problematic as it is the only element that changes size?

I notice it strikes in particular when the screen size changes - which makes sense I guess. It seems there is no sense of 'right-aligned' and no space-filling elements you can insert.

Aaron.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

I am not able to reproduce this issue with an up-to-date Ubuntu 9.04. Can someone else try it with the development version? Thanks in advance.

[Adrian Moisey (adrianmoisey)]

I can reproduce this issue on Jutsy i386

[Aaron Roydhouse (aaron-roydhouse)]

No change. The behaviour is the same in Jaunty 9.04 (amd64), gnome-panel 2.26.0.

To reproduce use xrandr to change the horizontal resolution of the screen to a larger and then smaller width, and note what happens to your right-aligned applets.

This affects laptop users who use external monitors that have a different horizontal resolution. When added and removing external monitors, all the right-aligned applets change order. Locking or not locking the applets doesn't seem to help.

Aaron.

[Robert Lange (rcl24)]

I can also confirm this on 9.04 (i686) with gnome-panel 2.26.0. Roydhouse's method (comment #12) is effective in reproducing it. This bug seems to happen primarily when you change screen resolution. It severely affects laptop users, rendering the use of external monitors to be unnecessarily painful. Because laptop use is a major growth area of computing, it would be unwise to allow Gnome to continue to lag behind in usability in this area.

In general, gnome-panel needs to do a better job of identifying when the user wants to right-stick applets and objects. When variable-sized objects are right-aligned, as they expand, they move to the left, and when they shrink, they do not always move back to the right. This has to be corrected manually in the gconf registry, using the following method.

I use gconf-editor to manually set gnome-panel applets and objects to be: locked = true, panel_right_stick = true, and position = (position from right). For example, the rightmost applet has position = 0, the second-rightmost applet has position = 1, the third-rightmost applet has position = 2, etc. After setting these settings in gconf-editor, I do not unlock the applets/objects or move them via the GUI.

These settings seem to persist as long as I do not change screen resolution.

After a resolution change, I look up the panel applet/object settings in gconf-editor again. I notice that the panel_right_stick attribute is no longer set and the position attribute is now an absolute coordinate from the left-side of the panel.

Gnome-panel should not alter panel applet/object alignment/position settings, except when the user moves the widgets via the GUI. Resizing the panel should cause the right-aligned widgets to move, but should not be considered to be a (user-intended) moving of the widgets.

[takeda64 (takeda64)]

Robert, I agree with you.

And even when the item is moved, couldn't the gnome-panel assume that user wants to attach to left side or right whenever it is possible to assume that? I mean most user will either stack items to the left or right. It would be very rare for user to put an item in an absolute location. And even in that situation a percentage value of the screen makes much more sense.

Even better solution would be something like Opera does have which is a dynamic spacer. It's an invisible element that pushes all other elements on its sides away from it. This would work perfectly when the screen is resized and if someone wants to put something in the center it's just a matter of putting two dynamic spacers on each side of that element.

[Wayne Werner (srilyk)]

I can confirm this bug on Ubuntu 9.04 with gnome panel 2.26.

What is most definitely broken behavior is that locked items will shift to make room for non-locked icons!

It really gets to be a pain - I want my clock, date, and login name to be on the right-most side of the panel. But gnome-panel doesn't seem to think that makes sense.

[edier (edier88)]

I confirm this bug on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala.

[takeda64 (takeda64)]

Filled in May 2007 - over 2 years ago - that's ridiculous.

This may seem like a minor inconvenience, but tiny things like this make me wonder that maybe windows wasn't so bad after all.

I'm sorry to say, but Ubuntu is full of tiny supposedly insignificant bugs and it's flooded with enormous amount of race conditions. If for once Ubuntu would just stop adding new features and only fix existing problems I think that would really improve satisfaction of all of the users.

</rant>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

such comments are of not use there, those softwares are not writting by the ubuntu team and the ubuntu team spent most of its ressources fixing problems not adding new feature as you writte

[Aaron Roydhouse (aaron-roydhouse)]

You're both right I think.

- This is a gnome-panel bug and we should all probably be talking to the gnome team about a fix rather than Ubuntu.

- Because gnome is a big part of the Ubuntu 'package', highly visible annoyances like this do reflect on the perceived quality of Ubuntu, and its ability to retain and grow its user base.

[Regular User (dot.ru)]

I can confirm this bug on ubuntu 10.10. Meaning that this won't get solve really, since we have gnome3. Comment's #13 was really helpful since now I know why this problem happens. The resolution of my screen does change whenever I connect my laptop to my TV to watch a something so that's what probably 'causing this problem.

[Regular User (dot.ru)]

It seems that the applet/notification causing the problem is the "battery status" one. I set it up so that it doesn't show up on the notification area anymore and the problem hasn't occurred again. It's not a problem while I'm on AC power in my house but it sure bothers me when I on battery and a glance to the notification area could give me the status of it. Still, this is the best workaround I've seen.