Re: Why modal dialogs are not movable?

[Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika yahoo com>]

----- Original Message -----

> From: Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>
> To: Ozan Çağlayan <ozancag gmail com>
> Cc: gnome-shell-list <gnome-shell-list gnome org>
> Sent: Thursday, April 4, 2013 4:15 PM
> Subject: Re: Why modal dialogs are not movable?
>
> T he app really should not make you manually save a copy. That should
> be taken care of automatically.

How do you suggest to revise Firefox to differentiate between the times
I only want to read the PDF in the browser and the times I want to read it
then decide I'd like to save it?

> Even if not, there is no excuse for
> not at least making a meaningful suggestion for the filename,  based
> on the title of the document.


It's not clear to me from that example whether Firefox generated that filename
or the author of the site from which it was downloaded named it that.  It could
even be generated on the fly.  Who knows?

The point you seem to miss is the user downloading a file doesn't
always want to give it the same name the server admin, computer algorithm,
and/or Gnome developer wants it to have, AND they might want to have a look at
the content underneath the modal dialog to decide on one-- a page number;
a title + page number; 3 words in the caption of a picture; some shorthand
based on analysis music notation; [stopping here out of sheer boredom]

Same problem goes for printing, mutatis mutandis.[1]
In the case of a maximized Firefox, when the user attempts the
understandable task of moving the modal dialog to look underneath, the
Firefox main window gets "unmaximized" and can even become completely
hidden underneath the modal dialog if the user pulls it to a bottom corner.
Now the user is looking at a modal dialog that is ostensibly sitting on top
of whatever other application happened to be below Firefox in the stacking
order.

At this point does someone mind repeating what problem Gnome's current
modal dialog behavior was trying to address?

-Jonathan

[1] Not relevant to my point here, but Evince adds to the problem when the user
tries to move the modal "Print" dialog to see the parent-- when the user finally
realizes they must cancel the dialog to do what they want Evince resets the
view to page 1.  I haven't looked to see whether this bug is reported yet, if
someone wants to beat me to it...


> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 4:22 AM, Ozan Çağlayan <ozancag gmail com> wrote:
> >   Hi,
> >
> >   I'm attaching a very annoying case that I encounter frequently. When I
> >   open a PDF and want to save it on the disk, the modal file dialog asks
> >   for the name of the file. The thing is that modal window can not be
> >   moved e.g. I can't look at the title of the PDF or whatever to get a
> >   clue for naming the file.
> >
> >   Is it a choice/restriction or a bug somewhere? Why I can't move them?
> >
> >   Thanks :)
> >
> >   --
> >   Ozan Çağlayan
> >   Research Assistant
> >   Galatasaray University - Computer Engineering Dept.
> >   http://www.ozancaglayan.com
> >
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> >   gnome-shell-list gnome org
> >   https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
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