launchers in panel overlap main menu making it inaccessible

[rduke15]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

When the panel is full with launchers and/or applets, if you (inadvertently) add another item, or if the screen is resized forcing the panel to become smaller, the main menu may become inaccessible. Icons that were to the right of the main menu have been moved underneath it and are not visible anymore. However, clicks are sent to these icons behind the menu, instead of to the menu.

For example, having a panel like this:

  Applications Places System icon1 icon2 icon3 icon4 etc.

After adding an icon for which there is no more room, or after the screen is resized, icons are pushed to the left and the panel may look like this:

  Applications Places System on3 icon4 etc.

(icon1 and icon2 are not visible any more; part of icon3 is also hidden)

When clicking on the System menu, the action associated with icon2, which is "behind" System, is started. It is impossible to access the System menu.

However, this behavior happens to the left-most item, not just the Menu Bar. After moving the Menu Bar to the right, the left-most item either has other items (applets or launchers) move on top of or underneath it. As more items are added to the panel, more items get stacked to the far left. Clicking on this stack will cause only one applet or launcher to activate, rendering the other items useless.

If items are removed from the panel, then the stack begins to spread back out to the right, taking up the free space. In doing so, each exposed applet/launcher becomes usable once again.

This happens in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty as well as 9.10 Karmic.

[Draycen DeCator (ddecator)]

Also effects Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit. Changed status to "confirmed."

[Draycen DeCator (ddecator)]

Also, removing icons causes the "hidden" icons to push back over to the right of the menus.

[Draycen DeCator (ddecator)]

This bug has been successfully reproduced in several different ways. No other applets to the right of the default Menu Bar are affected by this issue. However, if the default menu bar is removed, and more items added in it's place, then whichever item is furthest to the left gets affected. Even more instances of the Menu Bar, not to the far left, are unaffected. In summary...

The GNOME-Panel has a limited amount of space for items. If more items are added than there is space for, then items are pushed behind (or on top) of the item furthest to the left, whether it be applet or launcher. As more items are added, more items begin to stack to the far left. This causes all but one of the stacked items to become unusable.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments at: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=546681
I'm going to mark it as Triaged and wait for upstream to work on this. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better! Please report any other issues you may find.