Moving diagonally from narrow menu title often opens adjacent menu

[Bálint Magyar]

gtk 2.22, Ubuntu 10.10

1. Click on the volume control to open the sound menu.
2. Move the pointer diagonally to click on the maximum volume button.
<https://launchpadlibrarian.net/42732636/Why_autoexpanding_indicators_are_a_bad_idea.png>

What often happens: The sound menu closes, and the menu next to it opens.
Screencast: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVUokjAlREs>
Example in an informal usability test: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PgGbZfR6Vec#t=13m55s>

What should happen: The sound menu stays open.

One solution would be to make the volume slider vertical. But this would not work for other menus (like the Bluetooth menu), and would look awkward with other items in the menu.

Another solution would be to use a timer for closing the current menu and opening a new one. This is what Windows does for submenus. But it has the drawback of slowing down browsing, which would be worse for top-level menus than for submenus.

GTK already has a more sophisticated solution for submenus, similar to Mac OS: a triangle based on the corners of the submenu and its parent item, in which there is a much longer delay for closing the submenu and changing the menu selection. <http://www.quinn.echidna.id.au/Quinn/WWW/HISubtleties/HierarchicalMenus.html>
Discussion of the invisible triangle for submenus in GTK:
<http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2000-May/msg00118.html>

However, this feature in Gtk+ has been broken since July 2013. <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710388> The code, once fixed, should be applied to menu titles as well.

More information: <http://thomaspark.co/2011/10/making-menus-escapable/>

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

Thank you for helping with making Ubuntu better by reporting this bug. We've briefly discussed this issue on IRC and decided that this issue deserves some more attention. I'm marking this bug as Triaged and am opening an task in the upstream project so we can keep track of it there as well.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

I'm going to switch this to a GTK+ bug. Really GTK+ should handle this, we're just using shorter menu titles than it's used to so I don't think anyone has noticed before.

[Vish (vish)]

Ha! i was searching for this bug a couple of days ago.. when i should have been watching my inbox instead.. [thanks mpt. ;-) ]

[Carl Simpson (cwd-simpson)]

It might be worth considering (if it's even possible) only having a timer on menu opening if the mouse is actually moving diagonally. That way might keep the responsive feel when moving from menu to menu whilst stopping the reported behaviour.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

This problem has been solved repeatedly time-and-again since the mid-1980s. The solution is a triangular bounding box and should be something that the standard GtkMenu/Qt menu widget should be doing automatically. If the indicator widgets were switched to be standard GtkMenu/Qt widgets then this should be solved immediately (as would the issues of keyboard interaction and scrubbing).

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

The indicator menus are standard GTK menus, which is why this bug is filed against GTK. GTK menu titles have never had the same diagonal forgiveness that submenus have had.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

mpt: thanks for the clarification; so it's more that the *existing* sub-menu code should also be applied to the top-level menus (for Gtk+).

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

unasigned brastche as he is not on the project anymore.

[Thibaut Brandscheid (k1au3-is-37)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/971870/+attachment/2991689/+files/bug_indicator_switch_to_sensitive.png

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/971870/+attachment/2991690/+files/bug_indicator_switch_to_sensitive.ogv

[Rafael Belmonte (eaglescreen)]

Why don't you take a look at how GNOME-SHELL avoids this unpleasant behavior?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 7.3.2+15.10.20150921-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity (7.3.2+15.10.20150921-0ubuntu1) wily; urgency=medium

  [ Andrea Azzarone ]
  * Avoid to open adjacent menu when moving from an indicator icon to
    its dropdown menu. (LP: #552920)
  * Make sure to restore the state before the call to
    glDisable(GL_SCISSOR_TEST). (LP: #1485727)

  [ Iain Lane ]
  * launcher: Always make sure we check the right file when seeing if
    .desktop files have been deleted. Fixes disappearing launcher icons
    when applications are upgraded when we are using glib > 2.44. (LP:
    #1498106)

  [ Lars Uebernickel ]
  * DevicesSettingsImp: dont't feed garbage to gsettings (LP: #1495173)

  [ Luke Yelavich ]
  * Make a copy of a quicklist menu item plain text label
  * Make a copy of a quicklist menu item plain text label

  [ Marco Trevisan (Treviño) ]
  * MenuManager: add a new setting to control the show-now delay (LP:
    #1497915)

 -- Marco Trevisan (Treviño) <[e-mail]> Mon, 21 Sep 2015 17:44:10 +0000