Comment 0 for bug 408384

Binary package hint: nautilus

Icons are not displayed by default in either context menus, dialogue buttons or firefox bookmarks menu

Upstream is setting these two options to false by default.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=557469
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=583352

To ensure that *essential* icons are displayed, relevant applications must be patched.

Design Suggestion:
Meanwhile, now that we have flicked the switch and set icons to be off by default, we need to fix relevant applications to match. You can help! Whenever you see a program that has menu items for objects where those menu items now don't include icons, report a bug on the program that it should use always-show-icons for those particular items. And conversely, whenever you see a program with icons on menu items for things that aren't objects, report a bug that the icons should be removed.

Examples of menu items that count as objects, and should therefore have icons: applications, documents (including any recent documents in a "File" menu), disks, partitions, folders, bookmarks, history items, IM accounts, IM statuses, user accounts.

Examples of menu items that don't count as objects, and should therefore *not* have icons: openable windows (e.g. "Edit" > "Preferences" or "Go" > "Edit Bookmarks"), toolbars (e.g. "View" > "Toolbars" > anything), actions (e.g. "Go" > "Back").

Unlike menus in Windows, whether a menu item has an equivalent toolbar button is irrelevant to whether the menu item should have an icon.
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Please use this bug report only for Nautlius, and report missing menu icons in other applications as separate bugs. Otherwise anyone who fixes the bug in one package will be punished by being spammed about changes in packages they have no interest in. Perhaps you could use a common tag ("menu-icons"?) for bug reports on this issue.

For further details on the related discussions and design suggestions see Bug #407621